


Would You Serve?

by JaneSkazki



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Gen, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 01:22:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21110369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneSkazki/pseuds/JaneSkazki
Summary: An exploration of the early days of Voyager - if Chakotay had taken command.





	Would You Serve?

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for the initial post with no visible line breaks. That was horrible.
> 
> Voyager was set up with so many possibilities - and ended up with a set of characters who had no purpose and nowhere to go. I can't remember exactly when I wrote this. It must have been after disappointment set in, but while I was still enthusiastic enough to have all the early episode details at my fingertips.
> 
> There was some really good fanfic around in the early days - by people who saw the potential of a ship permanently on the verge of insurrection. This isn't one of those, but I'm posting it as a Voyager curiosity.
> 
> All the Voyager characters from the first episode are in here, but it's from the pov of the three listed. It's really their (alternative) story.

Would You Serve?

Kathryn Janeway didn't resist being pushed into the brig. Her escort stood back as the force field was raised. She lowered her face for a moment, schooling the outrage, the helpless fury out of her expression. When she looked up again, the guards were gone apart from one solitary Bajoran who was apparently familiarising herself with the security console. Janeway tried to remember the woman's name from the mission briefing, without success. Still, she didn't seem interested in making conversation. Janeway sat down on the bunk at the back of her cell and wondered how long it would be before more of her crew joined her, and how many of them. 

She couldn't believe she had misjudged Chakotay so badly. She had decided, perhaps rashly, that the only sensible response to their problem was to pool resources, cooperate. She'd let the Maquis leader convince her that he felt the same way. Hell, she'd even risked Paris, sending him back to rescue Chakotay from the shaft on the Ocampa home world. 

He had so completely fooled her. 

She was tense, waiting, she realised, for the roller-coaster ride as the array dispatched them back to the Alpha Quadrant. 

There was a secure seat with a harness in the cell. She'd use it when Chakotay signalled yellow alert... except that if the ride was anything like as bad as last time, it might just lead to a power outage that would enable her to escape. She decided to brace herself on the bunk instead. That way, she would be free to move if the opportunity lasted only seconds. 

Minutes ticked by. What was the crazy Maquis doing? The array had been damaged, disintegrating as they watched. Maybe Chakotay was relying on Tuvok to access the equipment that would send them home, and the Vulcan was refusing to cooperate, either because of the risk to the Ocampans, or as a bargaining tool, until his captain was released. 

If Tuvok wouldn't cooperate, Chakotay might play tit for tat. He might threaten to kill Janeway unless Tuvok obeyed him.

She pulled her knees up and crossed her arms on them. She knew what Tuvok's response would be. He'd refuse to be blackmailed. He wouldn't be startled into capitulating, as her bridge crew had been when they suddenly realised Chakotay was holding a phaser on her.

She couldn't even be angry with them. They'd all been exhausted. Harry had bounced back out of sickbay, but he'd had shadows like tyre tracks under his eyes.

Sure, it was carved in rock that Starfleet didn't give in to hostage takers, wouldn't make concessions to save individuals, but in practice, one usually did. 

She'd watched her officers throw down their weapons. Tom had raised his hands helplessly. Now he knew the goddamn rule: he was a Paris. But she hadn't seen fit to arm him. He'd left his phaser in the weapons locker after transport back from the planet.

She closed her eyes on a vision of the Maquis killing her crew one by one, while Tuvok refused to give in. Would they start with her? Or leave her 'till last? Or would they use the same tactic on her, to get her to order Tuvok to activate the array?

If they did, what would she do?

She shook her head. There was nothing, nothing at all in Chakotay's record to indicate he'd do this. Certain members of his crew, yes, but not Chakotay. That was why she'd been prepared to trust him...

"Janeway?"

She looked up. The Bajoran woman had come over to stand just on the other side of the force field, looking at her with a cold, measuring gaze. 

"I'm Seska. But I expect you know that already."

"I... I've heard the name. I suppose there are background files on you somewhere. I can't say I'd read them."

"Provided by Tuvok?"

Janeway shrugged, trying to look unconcerned. "It's a fact of life. Presumably your captain thought it was fair to use everything he learned at the Academy against us, against the Federation."

"Tuvok and I... never really saw eye to eye. Now I know why."

"He's an honourable man. He was doing his duty." Janeway tried her best to sound assured, in control. 

"You're afraid Chakotay will treat him like a traitor?" Seska nodded. "You're probably right. Chakotay... will take it as a personal betrayal, duty or not. The captain tends to take things personally."

Janeway shook her head. According to his file, Chakotay was principled, loyal -- if to the wrong people -- and well-balanced, despite his resignation and embarrassingly public espousal of the Maquis cause. Yet his decision to get his crew home, at whatever cost to the Ocampa... 

Suddenly, Janeway found there was another perspective on the problem. The caretaker had left destroying the array too late. If Voyager hadn't been here to involve the Kazon, the creature might have died too soon anyway. She might, in her anxiety to obey the Prime Directive, as if it were a novice gesture of good faith to the Delta Quadrant, have made the wrong decision. 

She stopped herself. She'd #made# a decision. It might have been wrong. That happened. You had to move on. Damn. She'd been a Starfleet officer for more than twenty years. She shouldn't have to remind herself of that.

Seska was still watching her. The Bajoran registered that she had Janeway's attention once more. "But it's Paris I feel sorry for..."

"Tom Paris risked his own life to save Chakotay. Your captain knows that."

"Precisely. That's why he knows he has to get rid of Tom Paris right now." Seska turned away, moving briskly back to her station.

The main door into security slid open, admitting the Maquis captain. 

Chakotay went to the security console, conferring urgently with Seska. She nodded a couple of times and went out. Janeway watched Chakotay as he stood with his back to her, altering settings. She guessed other members of her crew were confined elsewhere, and he was locking them out of vital systems, or setting up surveillance.

He was a big man, stocky and nearly a head taller than herself. His shoulders jutted like a lintel from his leather vest. His hair was buzz cut. She never liked men with straight hair so aggressively short. It was a stupid prejudice, and one day it would catch her out, but she didn't think this would be the day.

The force field on her cell collapsed with a soft 'ping', and Chakotay was turning to face her. 

"Captain Janeway," he said. "I'm sorry I had to do this. None of your crew has been harmed..."

He'd failed to get them home, and she wasn't sure if it was triumph or despair that clenched a cold fist round her heart. Obviously Tuvok had refused to help, or been unable to. It hardly mattered which. Now Chakotay had realised he was a long way from home, in a big ship that he didn't know how to run with his ragtag crew. So he was a realist. Good. But there were a few other hard truths he had to face up to before she could do business with him.

"Captain? Of what? Or is it just a courtesy?"

Chakotay looked a little startled, but mostly he continued to look tired. "I suppose I should call you 'Commodore', shouldn't I, but for the long term..."

Janeway lost patience with him. "So you couldn't persuade Lieutenant Tuvok to help you. Where is he now? I'm not prepared to discuss anything with you until I've seen for myself that he's okay."

"Tuvok, and the rest of your crew, are confined on cargo deck C. If you'll tell me how to do it, I'll get a visual up on one of these monitors."

She was surprised. In his place, she would have avoided admitting there was *anything* she need help with. She took a step to leave her cell, and he raised a hand, aiming a phaser at her. "We're all tired, and jumpy. Otherwise, I wouldn't have had a hope of getting the drop on your crew the way I did. Please sit down. I'm not risking a return match until we've worked out... a compromise. Please sit down, Captain."

"Compromise? What the hell do you mean, compromise? I get my ship back on alternate Tuesdays?" She didn't sit, and she didn't back away either.

He frowned, pulling the lines of his tattoo into the expression. "I had in mind, negotiating with you to let us off on a neutral planet when we got back to the alpha quadrant..."

Janeway shook her head a little. What was he talking about?

"But when you gave the order to destroy the array, I realised I was wasting my time, and maybe my only chance to have some input. If we'd gotten back, you'd have turned us over, wouldn't you?"

"I don't have the discretion to do anything else," she said severely. "You'll all get a fair trial and *if* you're found guilty of anything -- " *When*, she adjusted, privately. " -- a just sentence. What else would you want me to do? Do you want starship captains operating frontier justice according to their own prejudices? Really?"

"No, I can..."

"So what were you hoping to do? Leave the Ocampa to the Kazon, and take this ship back as a prize for the Maquis?"

"Captain..."

"I want to see Tuvok. If you get up the 'surveillance' menu on the right hand screen, there's a plan of the ship. Request 'video and audio', and then zoom in from camera seven alpha..."

He was following her instructions. The view of the cargo bay was a little grainy at high magnification, but Chakotay located Tuvok with no difficulty. The Vulcan sat apart from the others, apparently meditating. While they watched, Harry Kim came over and spoke to him. Tuvok raised his eyes and answered. Kim looked bothered by the reply, frustrated.

Although he was her security chief, Tuvok had never set foot on Voyager before today, and Chakotay had had the good sense to confine her crew in a large, open space, where one or two of his people could easily maintain a watch over them. Whatever Ensign Kim thought of the situation, Tuvok was probably right not to be doing anything. They should wait until the Maquis had worn themselves ragged trying to get the ship fully operational again. Hopefully the Kazon wouldn't attack first. "I'd like to see Tom Paris, too."

"Paris?" Chakotay sounded... annoyed. Or was it more than that? Janeway's stomach flipped.

"I didn't see him in the cargo bay. Where is he?"

"In sickbay."

"You told me none of my crew... Oh. I see. He's not considered part of the crew. That's a technicality, Chakotay. What did you do to him?"

The Maquis scowled at her. "A technicality? What the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about piracy, a flagrant breach of Federation conventions of warfare, criminal disregard for the Prime Directive..."

She stopped. He was shaking his head.

"Janeway... I'm going to assume you're as tired as I am. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

He switched the force field back on, forcing her back into her cell. And then he walked off. The Bajoran -- Seska -- came back in immediately. 

Janeway sat down on the bunk. Hell. He hadn't told her anything. She knew Tuvok, and maybe a score more of her crew, were okay. She couldn't be sure about the rest. And she'd learned virtually nothing. She should have asked him exactly why they were still here in the Delta Quadrant. He might lie to her, but she had a feeling he wouldn't do it well. She should have kept him there until she knew Paris was okay. She felt, oddly perhaps, more rather than less protective toward the young man. He was here as a volunteer, strictly, but he hadn't been offered much of a choice. Like Chakotay, too many of the Maquis would take Paris' defection personally. He didn't even have too many friends wearing Starfleet uniform to look out for him.

At that, a discomforting thought hit her. What if... Chakotay had said that 'none of her crew had been harmed'. The unspoken follow-on to that was 'by my crew'. If a Starfleet member had attacked a Starfleet observer... well, it wasn't what they'd been discussing. No reason he should have reported it as a matter of urgency. And if Paris needed to be separated from her crew for his own safety, he could be detained most easily in sickbay, even if he wasn't hurt. 

She'd accused Chakotay, whether it was justified or not, of mistreating a prisoner of war. She had no reason for that until she saw Tom's medical records and heard from the man himself, or witnesses she trusted, that the culprits were Maquis.

Hell, he might just have fallen over and turned his ankle.

Chakotay had some reason to lose patience with her.

Her head was throbbing with the dull ache of caffeine deprivation. Theoretically there was water available in her cell, but when she tried the fountain, it just gave a soft hiss of air.

"Excuse me?"

The Bajoran looked up. "I'm sorry," she said, clearly mimicking Janeway's careful politeness. "Captain Chakotay said he wasn't coming back tonight whatever you said."

"Did he also say I wasn't allowed food or water?"

"Water? I thought..."

Janeway held the plastic cup out upside down. "I think there must be a malfunction. Do you have any engineers?"

"Oh, dozens." Seska smiled a humourless smile. "I'll tell them you'd appreciate a call."

"I'm sure Captain Chakotay..." There, she'd said it. Well, she certainly wasn't going to bump him to commodore.

"I'll have to check with him." Seska, however, made no move to do so.

"Do my crew have food and water?" Janeway's tone became just a little less conciliatory.

"Of course. The captain's orders were that your people were to be fed before any of us got anything. He knows the rules."

"Oh."

"He didn't say anything about you. And of course, the Cardassians who run labour camps full of Bajorans don't wait to eat until the prisoners have been fed."

Janeway paused diplomatically. "I only want some water, please."

"Captain Chakotay told me he was going to get some rest. I don't think I should disturb him."

He won't have had a chance to find a bed yet, Janeway thought angrily. But she'd already lost her temper once, and it hadn't done her any good. "Doesn't he have a second in command?"

Seska shook her head. "We lost Johannson in the plasma storm when the Cardassians first forced us into the badlands."

Which was an evasion, Janeway thought irritably. But this was a lost cause. They could argue all night. The Bajoran woman clearly wanted to make a point.

'If everyone had left the treaty zone,' Janeway thought tiredly, 'no Federation citizen would be in the Cardassian camps. And Bajor never was part of the Federation. We can't defend everyone, even if we'd wanted to. We had to make a hard choice.' And for now, even the hard choices were out of her hands.

***

Chakotay stuck his head onto the bridge, deliberately keeping the rest of his body outside. B'Elanna was still working. He should tell her to stop. But if he did, one of her more enthusiastic, but less intelligent subordinates would probably mess up everything she'd done so far.

She looked up. "Did she buy it?"

He sighed. "She was too annoyed at finding herself in the brig to even listen to what I was offering."

His engineer pushed her hair back from her face, leaving a slick of carbon from her chin to her temple. "But you think she'll be in a better mood in the morning, right?"

"No. But I will. Did someone allocate quarters?"

B'Elanna jabbed with her elbow towards Geron. The Bajoran was still trying to get power back to the ops console. He'd been working on it for at least two hours. He stopped for a moment and held out a crumpled piece of paper. Chakotay eyed it sceptically. It had sketched out on it a plan of the main accommodation decks. "The captain's quarters are there," Geron pointed with two fingers that were still clutching a vital piece of circuitry. "Or the first officer's quarters are next door. He's dead, apparently. We haven't worried about changing sheets."

"Dead men's quarters," Chakotay said, not realising he was speaking aloud. 

B'Elanna looked up again. "Take the captain's quarters."

"Why? Are they bigger? Better?" It wasn't clear from the plan. Both looked large enough to accommodate his entire crew.

She shrugged. "No. It'll just be harder for you to change your mind in the morning."

He looked at her, but she'd already gone back to work, and they'd already had this argument.

"B'Elanna, we can't do this alone. Look at this." His gesture took in the devastated bridge. "If the Kazon come back any time soon, we'll be at their mercy."

"Work crews."

"We don't have the people to supervise them."

"There's Tom Paris."

Chakotay was already struggling with very mixed feelings about Paris. "You're saying you'd trust him? You're mad, Torres."

"I always told you, I don't think he's as bad as some people make out."

"No."

"Well, fine, Chakotay. If you remember, it was your principled decision to stay here. You'd better have a way of making it work. You may turn your nose up at using Starfleet personnel to do that, but it's in their interests too."

"You can't run a ship using forced labour."

"So let them volunteer. Explain the situation, and let them volunteer."

"The only way to do that, Torres, is to persuade Janeway. And at the moment, she's not willing to be persuaded of anything."

"At the moment? Get real. I know her kind, Captain. I had a run in with a one pip or two pip Janeway every day I was at the Academy. She will never regard us as anything but criminals, messing up her neat and tidy Federation. She won't compromise, she won't co-operate, she won't back down. You know that, and that's why you took this ship when you could. Don't back down now." B'Elanna bit her lip. "Go get some sleep, Chakotay. Use the ready room. You'll be nearer if we need you."

It was a good suggestion. There was a broad couch, and a rest room. The replicator was useless, but there was water. That and emergency rations was all anyone would be getting tonight. He'd ordered someone -- Chakotay couldn't remember who -- to assess the supply situation. 

He lay down on the couch. Tomorrow he'd have to make a tour of the ship and get reports from everyone. There was no way he could even spare the manpower to call a meeting of half his people... He'd have to get a printout of the deck layouts. He could wander round Voyager for half the day and not make contact with everyone...

Why the hell did it have to be Tuvok? he reflected bitterly. Since they'd lost Johannsen, the Vulcan had fallen into the role of Chakotay's second in command with an effortless inevitability. Seska had tried to insert herself between Chakotay and his crew but he'd slapped her down. It had been the last straw in their failing relationship. And the only other candidate was Torres. Chakotay knew she wasn't ready for it, and now, he knew she wouldn't have the time. 

They had to get intra-ship communications working better. Hell, he'd probably be faced with a mutiny if he handed out Starfleet communicators to his Maquis. For the ten seconds it took them to work out they could deface them and turn it into an insult to Janeway and Starfleet.

And since he had to win Kathryn Janeway over, and in the long run, his crew and hers had to live together, he couldn't afford to let them do that...

***

"Kim?"

The ensign stirred and opened his eyes. The Maquis had given them mats to sleep on, and the cargo bay was a comfortable temperature. They'd had enough to eat. And they were all exhausted. But Kim, like almost everyone else, was too strung out to sleep. He blinked at the unfamiliar face bending over him. Ginger hair, curly. Male. Two pips. No name came to mind.

"Lieutenant?"

"Carey, Engineering. You were down on the planet with that Klingon woman, Torres."

"Yes."

"And she's their engineer, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you think she has any idea what she's doing? I mean... this ship isn't in too bad a state right now, but if she starts trying to fix things she doesn't understand..."

"We... didn't really talk engineering, Lieutenant."

"So what kind of person is she? Is she going to tell her CO that she can't cope and ask for help?"

Kim sat up and rubbed at his eyes. So far B'Elanna's reaction to most problems seemed to be to disembowel them. The way she'd looked at Chakotay after her captain had ordered the array destroyed, he didn't even think the Maquis leader was immune from that.

"Isn't that... something Captain Janeway has to sort out with Captain Chakotay?"

Carey shook his head. "What if he by-passes her and..."

"Then you tell him you'll only do what she tells you. It's simple."

"What if the warp core is about to blow?" 

"I guess... if I was in that position... I'd help to fix it and worry about the consequences afterwards." Kim shrugged apologetically. "If that was all there was to it, I mean. Not if... Chakotay was planning to take Voyager back to the Alpha Quadrant and use her against Starfleet ships, or something like that. But obviously, he isn't."

"I don't understand that," Carey said, frustrated. "You were on the bridge. What really happened?"

Kim shook his head. "This is how I understood it. The array was disintegrating. The Caretaker, the alien in charge of it, was dying. He wanted to make sure the Ocampa were safe before he died, and in order to do that, he needed to destroy the array, so the Kazon couldn't use it. We couldn't use it to get home and be sure it would be completely destroyed afterwards. We didn't know enough about it. I guess if it hadn't been so badly damaged, we might have found it had a self-destruct capability, but it was falling apart already. The captain gave the order to destroy it. Lieutenant Tuvok was about to comply, but Torres objected." She'd produced a phaser rifle and aimed it at the captain, but Kim didn't think Carey would want to hear that. "Tuvok disarmed her. I guess we were all... surprised. I mean, the captain's decision was right, of course, but I didn't have time to think it through and..."

"And while you were all standing there with your mouths open, the Maquis took over?"

"You're saying we let him because we agreed with Torres?"

"I'm saying maybe your minds weren't on standard security procedures," Carey said frankly. "Off the record."

"Well, we were... caught off guard. So Chakotay was holding a phaser on the captain. There were as many Maquis people as Starfleet on the bridge. They were armed and ready for it. I guess... looking back, I guess when he ordered them to transport over to Voyager, he'd warned them he was going to do this." Kim looked sick at the thought. "He made that ship wide announcement, you heard it. His people collected up all the phasers. He ordered two of them to take the captain to the brig. Then he..."

The ensign paused. This was the point where he really didn't understand what had happened. 

"Yes? Then?"

"He looked at Kes... the Ocampan woman. He looked at Tuvok. And he said, 'Carry on, Tuvok. Destroy the array.'"

"Why? Why would he do that?"

"Well... I can only think of one reason."

"Which is?"

"It was the right thing to do."

***

"Computer, activate emergency medical holographic program."

Paris blinked as the irritating balding medic materialised close enough to diagnose minor skin complaints by visual inspection.

"Please state the nature of the medical emergency."

"I'm confined in sickbay behind a force field and I'm bored?" Paris suggested.

The hologram hesitated for a moment. "I am beginning to suspect that this is not a genuine ship, but a training simulation. Or perhaps my program has been hijacked to add verisimilitude to a student prank. Are you real, Mister Paris? And if so, are you injured or sick? You appear to have sustained some bruising to your jaw, probably in a fight. Do you require treatment for it? If not, why are you in sickbay and not in the brig?" 

"You think this is a simulation? Now that's an attractive idea, depending on the precise time the simulation started. Around the time I arrived at Caldik Prime would be good..."

"What are you talking about?" the hologram demanded impatiently. 

"I told you. I'm bored. Are you linked in to the ship's main computers?"

"No. Why should I be?"

"I'd like to know what's going on outside sickbay."

"Maybe someone will bring you some grapes and you can interrogate them. I have no idea what is going on outside sickbay. It's none of my business. Have replacement medical personnel arrived yet?"

"They're not likely to, Doctor. We're stranded in the Delta Quadrant."

"The Delta Quadrant. I see."

"Can you lower the force field?"

"I don't need to. I can simply materialise inside or outside it. Or indeed I can walk through it."

"But can you lower it?"

"Yes."

"Could you, please?"

"I am an emergency medical holographic program, not an idiot."

Paris sighed. "I never thought for a moment that you were an idiot. But I'm not supposed to be here. Any more than the captain is supposed to be in the brig. If you release *me*, I can go see about releasing *her*."

The hologram went through the motions of looking taken aback. "Why is the captain in the brig?"

"Because the Maquis put her there. They took over the ship. You remember the Maquis, they were in here earlier."

The hologram nodded. "Yes. I really need a nurse. If none is available, the captain should assign someone for training."

Paris' eyes lit. "The captain is in the brig, but I'm sure if you spoke to her..."

"That won't work, Mister Paris. I am an emergency medical holographic program. My programming does not cover events outside sickbay. Do you wish me to treat your injuries?"

"Okay. Go ahead. Although the other guy was hurt worse."

The hologram put down the regenerator he'd been about to use. "What 'other guy'?"

"You don't think I'm the kind to just turn the other cheek, do you? I think he had a concussion. He didn't get up straightaway. And he was going kind of blue in the face..."

"Where is he?"

"In the brig."

The hologram scowled. "Computer, open a holochannel to the brig."

Seska's face flashed up on a screen in among the monitors over the biobed. "Who the hell are you?" she demanded.

"I am the ship's emergency medical holographic program. I am downloading medical scans from persons in custody..."

"Who is that?" It was the captain's voice. She sounded a little hoarse, a little angry. 

The channel went dead.

"There is no one in sick bay with any injuries," the EMHP said disapprovingly.

"But the captain is in there."

"She might have been interviewing a prisoner."

"What was her location?"

"There is one human in custody, and a..."

"Bajoran. Seska is Bajoran."

The EMHP looked puzzled. "A Bajoran, then, at the control station. Captain Kathryn Janeway is in custody. Why?"

"Doctor, the Maquis have taken over the ship. That's mutiny, or piracy, or something. I assure you, if you don't let me do something about it, you're going to have more casualties than you have beds for. All I'm asking for is a little preventative medicine. Doesn't your program cover that?"

The hologram considered. "Using that argument, my program would have to cover almost everything."

"Look at it this way. Your programming isn't designed to enable you to make the correct decision in these circumstances. So you have to let me decide. No one specifically ordered you *not* to release me, did they?" Paris crossed his fingers.

"No."

"Does your program give you the authority to detain people? I'm not criminally insane, or contagious."

"No, it does not."

"So by default..."

The EMHP shrugged. "You've made your point. On one condition..."

"What?"

"That you terminate my program before leaving."

***

Lon Suder dragged the body, staggering awkwardly backwards down the service way. He didn't know the man's name, or anything else about him. He didn't know where he was going to put the body. He didn't care.

***

"Tom!"

Paris spun, startled by the delighted feminine voice. It belonged, he was slightly disappointed to discover, to the Ocampan woman. If one of the Maquis had been that pleased to see him, he would have had something to work with. 

"Kes."

"What's happening, Tom? We thought... well, we didn't know what to think. If you're wearing that uniform... shouldn't you be locked up like the others?"

"Um... what exactly has Chakotay told you, Kes?"

"That if you manage to get home, all the Maquis, the people who were on the other ship, will be arrested as criminals. They'll be sent to prison. Is that true? I mean... if they're dangerous criminals, why would Captain Janeway have let them aboard to start with?"

A very good question, Tom reflected. "Well, there are different kinds of criminals, I guess. Sometimes good people have good reasons for breaking the law. And other good people seem to have equally good reasons for trying to stop them. And... we have both kinds of good people on this ship, I'd say."

"So it's true?"

"Sure. In fact, I'm one of the ones who'll be back in prison the moment we get back, so you could say I side with Chakotay this time."

"But you're in the uniform..."

"It's a long story."

"Dearest!" 

Kes spun reflexively. The Talaxian hurried up the corridor to join them. He waved his hands furiously at Paris. "What are you doing with this... this..."

"Person?" Paris suggested.

"Criminal. Renegade. Deserter." Neelix ran his eye over the Ocampan, as if expecting to find her damaged. "Did he do anything, sweetie?"

"Of course not, Neelix. I'm just talking to him. I wanted to understand what was happening here."

"Captain Chakotay explained..."

"He didn't explain why this dangerous criminal renegade risked his life to go back and save Chakotay in the first place."

Her voice was firm rather than sharp, but the Talaxian reacted as if she'd slapped him. "You don't understand, dearest," he said petulantly. "These people are not our friends. They pretended to be friendly, but only in order to use us to capture Chakotay and the Maquis..."

"Chakotay told you that?" Paris interrupted, more surprised that his former captain should have spent time trying to keep the two new arrivals on his side than that he should have lied. Chakotay was quite capable of lying, in a good cause, but this didn't seem to be one. 

"Not... exactly," Neelix admitted. "I worked that out for myself."

"I really don't think Captain Janeway was using you, any more than you were using us to rescue Kes. She really did want to get Harry back, and B'Elanna."

"And Captain Chakotay?" Kes said. "Why would he lie to us?"

Paris frowned at her. "I didn't say he had."

"But you think he might." It wasn't a question. Then Paris remembered that the Ocampa had some kind of telepathic ability.

"I don't know what you're reading in my mind. I don't like him. I don't like him almost as much as he doesn't like me, but... he's straight as a die. In fact, that's why he doesn't like me. He thinks I'm as straight as a corkscrew."

Kes tipped her head thoughtfully to one side. "And are you?"

Paris shifted his weight. "At the moment, I'm having to be devious. I'm not sure what I want, or what's best for everyone else, but I'm pretty sure whatever I do, everyone will put the worst possible interpretation on it, so..."

"Like Harry did."

"Oh, you heard about that."

Kes nodded.

"Well, to be honest, I think that was just... meant for the Maquis in general, not just for me. And he was probably more mad at himself than anyone, for standing there with his mouth open while Chakotay hijacked Voyager."

"What's he talking about?" Neelix demanded. His hair seemed to bristle with curiosity.

"B'Elanna told me that when Chakotay took over the ship, Paris offered to join his crew. But Chakotay turned him down, and then Harry hit him."

"It was nice, having a friend for a while," Paris said with forced good humour. "I'll miss old Harry."

"So if Captain Chakotay *didn't* want you on his crew," the Talaxian reasoned laboriously, "why are you out here walking around?"

"I escaped from sickbay, and now I can't decide whether to... what to do."

"You could come with us, if you really feel you don't have any friends here." Kes smiled in response to Paris' surprise. "I can't read your mind, but I've seen what you've done since you've been here. I'd be happy be your friend."

"Dearest..." Neelix began suspiciously.

"But I think you'd be happiest staying here, with the people you care about."

"Care about? What are you getting at? Captain Janeway is going to put me back in prison. And Harry just took a poke at me."

"Because he thought you were letting him down."

"Oh, I let everyone down, sooner or later."

"And he cared enough to be angry with you. Did he 'take a poke' at Chakotay? No."

Paris chewed his lip. He hadn't considered the option of simply abandoning Voyager, but the idea had merits. He had no 'past' in this quadrant, and probably a better chance of surviving with two natives than with a ship full of hostile intruders, particularly since those intruders were at each other's throats. 

He couldn't identify the source of his reluctance to leave. He wasn't welcome here. That had been made plain enough. If they ever got home, and Janeway was in command, he would be returned to prison... unless Chakotay and Janeway worked out some compromise on that score. 

Somehow, he didn't think compromise would be Janeway's strong suit, or that Chakotay would hold out for Paris' sake if he was being offered any kind of deal for his own people. 

And if there was no compromise, he really didn't see how Chakotay was going to survive without Starfleet assistance.

"I think I might take you up on your offer."

"Good," Kes beamed. 

"But I have to do something first. Neelix, do you think it's possible to set up a fake sensor reading from your ship, make it look as if there's a human on board when there isn't?" 

"Why would you want to do that?" the Talaxian wanted to know. He frowned suspiciously. "If you want to leave with us..."

"I want Chakotay to think I'm safely out of the way, while I lay on a gaol break for Captain Janeway." Paris smiled ruefully. "I think I owe the lady that much."

Kes's smile broadened. "Tom... I'm not sure whose side we're on, but we'll certainly help you, if only to even out the odds."

"Sweetheart, isn't this mutiny?" Neelix enquired, with a mixture of caution and sarcasm. The hard glint in the Talaxian's eyes warned that any real disapproval was aimed at Paris.

"Mutiny," Paris said firmly, "is only a crime when it doesn't work."

***

Breakfast arrived, and Janeway drank the orange juice first. Only it wasn't orange juice. It looked like it, but tasted like sour milk. She shook her head at the sensation and debated refilling her glass. This might be the last meal she was offered for a while. 

"Is your meal okay, Captain?" She looked up, startled. Seska had been relieved by the tall, dark Maquis who had accompanied them to the array the previous day. She tried to recall his name, and realised she wasn't sure if she'd ever been told it. 

He had a pleasant, soft voice, and didn't radiate hostility, the way the Bajoran had. Janeway found herself wondering just how this gentle giant had ended up in the Maquis.

"Yes, thank you. This stuff is... strange. Is it..."

"The Talaxian had it on his ship." The man smiled. "I got the impression it was remaindered stock."

Janeway found herself wanting to smile too. This Maquis was such a contrast to Seska. He could just be a good actor, she reminded herself, and forced a frown. "Well, I'm grateful for the free sample, but I don't think he's going to find any customers here, unless it's to Klingon or Vulcan taste."

"Mister Tuvok didn't seem to like it either," her guard informed her.

"You've seen my crew this morning?" she asked, then cursed herself for sounding overeager.

He shook his head. "I'm sure they're okay. Tuvok was having breakfast with Captain Chakotay, just like back on the Crazy Horse."

They looked at each other; sharing a sense of confusion.

"If Chakotay's trying to steal my crew," she said flatly, "he's wasting his time.

"No. As far as I know, Tuvok asked to see the captain."

"So Chakotay invited him to breakfast." She slid her tray onto the shelf by the opening into her cell and sat back down. Suddenly, she had no appetite. Her guard looked concerned. "If you don't like any of it, the captain said I could offer you Starfleet rations."

"I don't want anything that isn't available to my crew, all of my crew." Her voice was properly unfriendly now. She tucked her ankles together and closed her eyes. She heard the shield sigh as it formed an aperture for the man to remove the tray. She imagined him walking away. She tried to recall his behaviour the previous day, to judge how conscientious a guard he was likely to be.

It was depressingly difficult to imagine Chakotay tolerating a less than competent crew.

***

"I don't have time to eat breakfast, Geron. Go eat your own."

"I've had some of the stuff the Talaxian gave us. I'd rather wait until you have the replicators back on line."

"I hope you're carrying some spare weight. Shit!"

The component Torres was manipulating cracked as she applied too much force to it. Her hand skidded, and one shard slashed into the bioneural gel pack that processed input direct from the main sensors.

She was too angry to speak. She wiped her hand on her pants leg and stared at the leaking mess. 

"B'Elanna..." Geron began.

"I know," she snapped. "I'm tired. I can't locate the correct parts, if they're available at all. I'm probably not using the right tools. And the last time I saw gel packs, you needed a laser cutter to get through the membrane. Why the hell did Starfleet specify such flimsy envelopes for them? Just to spite the Maquis?"

Her assistant kept his answer to himself. After a moment, B'Elanna squared her shoulders. "Is Chakotay still talking to that Vulcan p'tach?"

"Um... I think so."

"Well, I'm going to get me some help. Without sensors, we could fly straight into another plasma storm. I want their ops officer up here."

"Is that..."

"His name's Kim. Ensign Harry Kim. Give whatever excuse you like. Tell them Tuvok asked for him to be brought up to the bridge. And Geron!"

Her assistant looked back at her. "Yes, Chief?"

"He looks like a week old puppy. Don't be taken in."

***

Carey had decided he was in charge, now that Tuvok had left them, and since there was still no sign of Rawlings. He didn't even know if the Maquis were looking for the missing Starfleet officer.

There wasn't much 'being in charge' to do. Their captors had provided an edible, if unpalatable, breakfast. Carey couldn't work out where they'd gotten it from. It sure hadn't come out of Voyager stores, or Voyager replicators. And they'd made provision for the hastily rigged latrines to be cleaned out. So really, he had nothing to complain about, nothing to work off his frustration. 

"This is ridiculous," he muttered, watching people stacking up the sleeping mats, clearing the centre of the cargo bay. "Are you planning a handball game or something, Kim?" Carey wouldn't have been in the least surprised if the ensign *had* organised a handball tournament, and asked the guards if they wanted to join in. "You've certainly cheered up since last night."

"This can't last," Kim offered by way of explanation. "They only have thirty nine people, almost none of them familiar with the kind of systems Voyager has. They have to do a deal. That'll be why Lieutenant Tuvok's been talking to them so long."

"Really. I'm glad we have nothing to worry about then." Carey flopped down on a pile of mats. "So long as your Klingon friend doesn't blow us all to kingdom come before the deal's cut."

"We just helped each other out," Kim began to protest, then stopped, as the attention of both men was caught by an argument between their two Maquis guards and a third man, all standing in the open doorway. 

"Is there an Ensign Kim in here?" one of them shouted out. Carey clamped a hand onto Kim's arm before he could answer. He released the ensign and strode over to the door. His eye was caught by the communicator pins all three Maquis were now wearing, upside down. He bit his lip on his irritation at the childish gesture. "Since you keep telling me all our people are in here, apart from Captain Janeway and Lieutenant Tuvok, I guess he has to be. Or are you trying to ID a body?"

"There are no bodies, Starfleet," the guard repeated, with exaggerated boredom. "Yet."

"Are you making threats?"

The guard turned away from him impatiently. "One of you has to be Ensign Kim."

"Who wants to know?" Kim himself asked. The guard grinned and turned to his fellow. "D'you reckon that's the one?"

"The one what?" Carey tried to get back control of the exchange, but it was too late. The muzzle of a phaser rifle was jammed under his chin. 

"Tell him to get over here."

"Stay put, everyone."

The temperature in the bay seemed to drop twenty degrees, then the newly arrived Maquis stepped through the door and walked over to Kim. "If you're Kim, we've got a maintenance meltdown. We're damaging more stuff than we can mend at the moment. And we're currently on 10% sensors. We're practically blind."

Kim swallowed. "I'm not an engineer."

The Maquis shrugged. "The Chief told me to fetch you."

"B'Elanna?"

"Ensign, you are not going to help these pirates." Carey was acutely aware of everyone's eyes on him, most of all Kim's. He'd never given an order in his life that was this controversial.

"Yes, sir," the ensign said, surprising him.

"If you have a maintenance problem that you can't deal with, you can request Captain Janeway to assign someone to help you. I'm sure that under the right conditions, she'll be only too happy to have her officers get her ship back together. And you should realise that however bad the situation is now, it's only going to get worse."

The Maquis licked his lips. 

Did that mean he was nervous, Carey wondered. And would being nervous make him back off, or do something desperate? He looked so young, and that made him unpredictable too.

They faced each other for a long moment. Then the Maquis broke eye contact. He turned a little, so he was addressing everyone. "Do you want us to end up fighting over a wreck?" he asked. "The main computer memory is at risk, even if we don't drift into an asteroid field, or something."

Carey swallowed. Dammit, this frightened kid was right. And he wasn't a killer. He was just someone else who wanted to go home.

"Ensign, go with him. Assess the situation, but don't offer any assistance. Just keep telling them you have to speak to the captain first."

Kim nodded briskly, but Carey watched him go with a sinking heart. The Maquis had wrung a major concession from him, in just allowing Kim to go at all. Once the inexperienced ensign was alone with them, it would be all too easy to get exactly what they wanted.

***

B'Elanna Torres turned as the doors opened, and straightened, laying down her tools. "Harry."

"Miss Torres."

She gave him a wry smile and gestured at the stripped down console she'd been working on. "There's a hell of a lot of stuff here I'm really not too familiar with."

Kim didn't reply. 

"Not talking to me? Okay. I just want you to take a look. Don't touch. Then do two things. Be prepared to make a report to Janeway, and start planning a salvage operation. I have... well, let's say fewer engineers than Starfleet would send to change a light bulb, and because of the bioneural technology this ship uses, we're getting a kind of degradation. I don't know how to handle it."

She thought she could detect concern behind the Asian's lack of expression, but he still didn't speak.

"Or of course, you could start helping me now, before something irreplaceable gets compromised, or someone gets killed."

Kim's implacability firmed up. He raised his chin a fraction.

"However things work out, we're either dying here in the Delta Quadrant together, or going home together. There isn't a third option. And Harry, yesterday we were able to work with each other."

"That was before you stole our ship."

"That was before we sacrificed ours to save yours." She waited, but Harry had clamped his mouth shut again. "Well, okay, Starfleet. Come around here by me and have a look at the sensor relay here. Janeway might believe you when you tell her how bad it is."

Harry obeyed. He stared into the gutted cabinet and swallowed. 

"A mess, isn't it?"

"I'm not sure I could help you with this. You'd need Carey..."

"Carey?"

"Our assistant chief of engineering. Well... He was assistant chief..."

"Your chief bought it? I'm sorry."

"I didn't know him. Like I told you, this is my first mission."

Torres shook her head. "I really am sorry. How many people did you lose?"

"I'm not sure."

"No one's been hurt since. I can promise you that. Except Paris, of course."

Kim glanced away from her. He tapped on the top of the console nervously. "What about Rawlings?"

"Rawlings? Who's he?"

"Second shift helmsman. Lieutenant Rawlings. He's not in the cargo bay with everyone else."

"Damn."

She turned away and strode over to the ready room. The door juddered as it slid open.

"Captain, there's a Starfleet officer unaccounted for. A lieutenant, bridge officer. Rawlings."

Chakotay came out. He scowled and gestured at Kim. "What's he doing here?"

"I was hoping to charm him into helping me. He wants to know what happened to this Rawlings."

The Maquis captain shook his head. "Tuvok told me everyone was accounted for." 

Torres watched the realisation dawn in Kim's eyes, that he had quite possibly alerted the Maquis to the existence of a free agent on the ship. "Well, he was lying to you, Chakotay. But I don't see what we can do about it. We don't have internal sensors, or the people to make a tricorder scan for a missing person."

Chakotay was thinking. "Rawlings was left in charge while Janeway and I beamed down to the array. He's probably quite capable of making trouble for us, but as you say, he'll be hard to find, right now."

"You could make an all ship announcement, Chakotay," Geron said. "Warn him if he does anything, there'll be reprisals..."

"I will not do anything of the sort, crewman." Chakotay's tone was sharp and angry. "B'Elanna, alert everyone. Do it on all ship, so this Rawlings will know we're expecting trouble. With luck, that will be enough to make him hold his hand for a while longer. And tell Ayala to bring Janeway up here. I'm hoping we'll sort something out quickly now, then she can tell her rogue to behave himself."

***

Janeway was brought up to her ready room with an escort of two guards. Chakotay hesitated, then dismissed them to wait outside. He nodded at a chair by her desk, taking her own seat himself. 

She sat, very erect and still, waiting to see what Chakotay had to say. He, in turn, waited as Tuvok and Ensign Kim entered.

"Mister Kim, can you briefly tell Captain Janeway what you've seen on the bridge?"

"Captain?"

"Go ahead, Ensign." She gave him a reassuring smile.

"Their engineer, B'Elanna Torres, let me inspect some of the damage to the bridge systems. Apart from the... uh... superficial stuff, the bioneural network is degrading. She... she's not familiar with the technology..."

"I should hope not," Janeway interrupted. Then she seemed to realise that Kim was already very nervous, and her words hadn't helped. "Harry, are you saying that if a Starfleet engineer doesn't take action quickly, the damage will be irreparable?"

"Yes, Captain."

She looked across the desk at Chakotay. "Release my crew, Maquis, and acknowledge my command of this ship. Then we'll start repairs." 

"If... when... this ship returns to the Alpha Quadrant, Captain, I will release your crew on a neutral planet, if that is what they wish. If we returned under your command, you have made it perfectly clear that my crew would face prison."

Janeway paused before answering. "I told you earlier, I do not have any discretion..."

"Captain, you do."

Her head shot up at Tuvok's words. She stood and walked across the room to where the Vulcan stood. "Explain."

"If a Starfleet vessel," he quoted, "is involved in emergency service outside Federation territory and the situation requires a co-ordinated response with vessels of another power, a Starfleet officer may place his vessel under the fleet command..."

"What fleet?" Janeway said sharply.

Chakotay looked grim. "We had a fleet, a fleet that was co-operating against the Kazon. We sacrificed one ship to save the other. I think that constitutes a co-ordinated response."

"But..."

"If the admiral's flagship is lost, he takes another. He doesn't hand over command of the fleet to whoever still has a ship."

Janeway looked from Chakotay to Tuvok, and back again. "So you've fixed this up between you."

"No, Captain. I have merely attempted to address Captain Chakotay's legitimate concerns. We need the co-operation of his crew, despite our superior numbers. We wish to return to the Alpha Quadrant. They will not help us if their reward is to be imprisonment. And you know yourself, that the Maquis does not imprison or punish those who take action in support of Federation policy. It has been their practice to repatriate detainees through neutral territory. In addition, Captain, you are accustomed to operating with the extensive, sophisticated support of Starfleet. We are seventy thousand light years from Earth. We will have to compromise and improvise if we are to survive. I... believe Captain Chakotay has more experience in that area."

Chakotay watched the colour drain from Janeway's face, until she looked like alabaster. 

When she spoke, her voice was low and bitter. "You expect me to hand over command of my ship to a man who allowed his crew to assault a civilian observer..."

Chakotay held up his hand. "Stop there."

"Why? Is Paris considered fair game?"

"I hit Tom Paris, Captain."

She turned and stared at Harry Kim.

"I'm sorry, Captain. I just... he offered to join the Maquis. He said they'd need help to run Voyager. I... lost my temper."

Janeway raised a hand to silence the ensign. "We'll deal with this later. I apologise, Chakotay. I wish you'd clarified the situation earlier."

"So do I," Chakotay said. "But you don't need to worry about Paris. I didn't think his help was worth having, and he's decided to jump ship. Neelix is transferring some navigational information to our computers, and when he's finished, he's leaving with Kes and taking Paris with him."

She narrowed her eyes. "He saved your life, Chakotay..."

"I didn't throw him off the ship, Captain, it was his choice."

Every man in the ready room had his eyes fixed on Janeway. Chakotay could sympathise with the sheen of perspiration on her temples, and the fine tremor in her fingers.

"What exactly are your terms, Captain Chakotay?"

The Maquis stood. "You will instruct your crew that I am now in command of this ship," he said formally. "It will no longer be referred to as the USS Voyager, simply as Voyager. Since you and I, and the majority of the combined crew, are familiar with Starfleet protocols, we'll take those as a starting point for the running of this ship." He stopped, and his expression lost some of its ice. "I respect you, Captain, and I believe your crew will follow you however little this situation appeals to them initially."

"You mean, you'll hold me responsible for their actions."

"Not in the way you mean. I want you to be my first officer. To that extent, I will." He waited for a reply and got none. "Do you need some time to consider this?"

"No." She looked for a moment as if that was a mistake, then plainly dismissed whatever second thoughts had assailed her. "Captain, we're a long way from home. I don't think it's fair to let Tom Paris go without making clear to him that he has a free choice in the matter. After I've informed my crew of the... change of command, may I talk to him?"

Chakotay glanced at the window, at the motionless stars outside. 

"Yes. Just don't promise him anything I might not agree to. And don't think that I'll compromise the security of this ship because of a personal debt..."

"Captain."

His head shot up, gratifyingly. 

"What?"

"Tom Paris went back to rescue a member of this crew. It could just as well have been Ensign Kim, or Miss Torres." 

For a moment, she thought Chakotay was going to lose his temper, but the Maquis merely nodded. "Point taken."

"Then he'll be offered the same terms as a Starfleet officer?"

"Whatever those terms are. Paris is not a priority, Commander. Getting this ship home safely is."

***

Twenty four hours later, Janeway stood in what used to be her first officer's quarters, trying to stave off sleep for another ten minutes. Voyager was no longer blinking priority warnings like a paranoid Christmas tree. They were ready to move on; just not sure, it seemed, where they were moving to. Chakotay had spent time with the Talaxian and two of her -- she had to stop doing that, Janeway reminded herself sharply -- of the ship's cartographers, sketching out likely routes, while she herself had spent a day and night meeting the betrayed faces of her own -- oh, what the hell -- her own crew, and the distrustful ones of the Maquis as she stood in for her lost engineering chief.

She sat on the edge of the desk and pressed her fingertips to her lips. Dear Lord, what had she done?

The door chimed. She prayed briefly, and vehemently, that it wasn't Chakotay, then remembered that *he* would not come calling on *her*.

"Come."

Harry Kim stood in door, hesitated for a moment, then entered. He halted at parade rest. "C...Commander."

He'd stood outside her door, practising saying it. She knew as surely as if the door were a one-way mirror. And he'd still choked on the rank. She'd patiently corrected every man and woman who'd called her 'Captain' throughout the day, wondering if Chakotay was sparing a moment's thought for their resentment and hers.

"Ensign, when I told you to come see me tomorrow morning, I stupidly assumed I'd have fitted a night, at least a short one, in between somewhere." She held a hand up before he could apologise. "Have you slept?"

"Yes, Commander."

"When are you on duty this morning?"

"At oh nine hundred... in ninety minutes."

She smiled at him. "Is it that obvious I don't know which way is up right now?"

He smiled back and she wanted to kiss him for the honest concern in his face. Instead, she changed the subject. "You spent most of yesterday working with B'Elanna Torres, didn't you?" she asked instead. The Maquis engineer had been a problem at first. She had neither trust nor intellectual respect for the Starfleet officers around her, and she made no effort to hide it, but Chakotay, on one of his unpredictable appearances on the bridge, had told her to shut up and let Harry show her the ropes. Janeway had kept an eye on the resulting partnership. At first, she'd been impressed that a single snapped order from Chakotay had brought the Klingon to heel, but she'd quickly realised that Voyager's new captain had done more than that; Torres was willing to learn from Harry Kim, and Harry Kim, unlike most of her old crew, didn't seem to need to rub his pupil's nose in her ignorance. Whether by luck, or judgement, a partnership of sorts had been forged. 

"Yes, ma'am. Uh..."

She shook her head. "I've lost the right to be picky." And if she tried to be, she suspected the Maquis would delight in using it to bait her. "I'm glad you and Torres are getting on so well. Don't let anyone criticise you for it. Harry, I know this was..."

The door chimed again. Janeway frowned. "Come." 

Tom Paris was inside her cabin before the door was half open. He stepped forward, but the door stubbornly opened fully before changing direction. "Have you any idea how difficult it is to sneak around on your ship, Captain?"

Janeway tightened her jaw. She had not expected this, but still, it made sense. Why else would Tom have refused to talk to her on Neelix's ship? Obviously, because he wasn't there. And now he was here, armed -- three unfamiliar hand weapons hung at his belt -- and ready to join the insurrection. 

The mutiny.

The liberation.

Her com badge beeped. She raised a finger to it automatically, and another to her mouth, hushing her visitors.

"Commander, we've found Lieutenant Rawlings."

Chakotay sounded grim.

"And?" she snapped.

There was a silence from the other end of the link, then an audible sigh. 

She ground her teeth. "I'm sorry, Captain. Shall I come to your ready room?"

"Yes, please, Commander." Their titles were like gestures in a stately and hostile dance. "He's dead. We think Paris killed him."

***

Janeway had taken the weapons Paris had brought her, given one to Kim and locked the rest in the desk. "I'll be back," she promised shortly, leaving the ensign to stand guard.

She entered the ready room, noting that Chakotay looked rumpled, freshly woken. It didn't help that he had no uniform, just the same leather vest he'd worn the previous day, over a clean shirt he must have requisitioned from one of her dead crew members. Seska pushed past her. The Bajoran looked pleased about something. 

Chakotay sat down at her desk, leaving her standing alongside Tuvok. His expression was tight, angry. 'Why do you care?' she wanted to demand. 'He's not one of yours.'

"Tell her what you told me," Chakotay instructed Tuvok, who began an emotionless report. "Lieutenant Rawlings' body was discovered in a Jeffries tube on deck eight, Commander. He had been struck from behind with a piece of reinforced conduit. The blow undoubtedly rendered him unconscious, and death resulted from loss of blood over a period of several hours." The Vulcan hesitated. "I am partly to blame. I was aware that his whereabouts were not accounted for. I had not informed Captain Chakotay. Had a search been undertaken earlier, he would have been found, and almost certainly he would have survived."

"But instead," Chakotay continued for him, "you were keeping your options open, a wild card. In case your captain didn't like the agreement you were proposing."

"Or in case you would not agree acceptable terms. I have already admitted as much to you." Tuvok raised his chin. "I would not have advised that course of action, but it was not my place to rule out any option." He hesitated again. Janeway couldn't remember a single previous conversation in which the Vulcan had sounded so completely unsure of himself. "My ultimate loyalty, Captain, is to Starfleet, here represented by Kathryn Janeway, and I dispose of it as she orders. When the transfer of command was agreed, you already knew that Lieutenant Rawlings was missing."

Chakotay wasn't looking at either of them. Janeway didn't know how he, or Tuvok, had ever imagined this could work. Tuvok might let her dispose of his loyalty, but she wasn't sure that would hold true for all her crew. Chakotay must be unsure of her also. He could be facing the next 70 years waiting for a mutiny, at any time when his guard was down, or his resources stretched. But then, what did he have to lose? This way, at least, he was trying to keep his people free. 

If they'd tried it the other way round, if she'd made promises to let the Maquis slip away into the shadows once they got home, he would still have spent the intervening years wondering if he could trust her, or if they might arrive home in some blaze of publicity that would make such a generous gesture impossible.

Whoever sat in that centre chair, they had to trust the person sitting next to them. 

"Captain..."

Chakotay looked up at her.

"I... don't see any reason why Tom Paris should have attacked anyone, in my crew or yours..."

"He's not aboard the Talaxian's ship. Neelix had set up his screens to make it look as if there..."

"He's in my cabin, Captain. Ensign Kim is holding him there."

"Holding him?" 

Was Chakotay's tone disbelieving, or just surprised? He touched his communicator. It bothered Janeway to see him do it, so casually. Most of his crew now wore the pins, but inverted. Chakotay's was the right way up.

"Ayala?"

"Cap? I'm..."

"Need you to do something. Go to Janeway's cabin. C19. The door..." He glanced at her. "The door isn't locked. Go armed, be prepared for trouble, report on what you find there."

"Sure."

Chakotay regarded her seriously. "I hope Ensign Kim isn't letting Tom Paris' golden tongue get the better of him."

"I ordered them -- both of them -- to wait there for me. I expect them to do exactly that." 

"Paris came to you voluntarily? He didn't make conditions for helping you?"

"Voluntarily, and no conditions."

He nodded. "Tuvok, apart from the circumstantial evidence..."

"The piece of conduit had been wiped clean, and may have been handled initially using protective gloves. The body was found by Crewman Suder. I have made such forensic tests as I can. There is extensive smoke damage in the area, some of it due to smouldering insulation after the time of death. Rawlings' and Suder's DNA has been found in that area, as have lesser traces of other members of Voyager's original crew. The attacker might have been wearing hazard overalls, in which case..."

"Paris had no reason to kill Rawlings, and certainly no motivation for a premeditated killing. Captain..."

Chakotay waved Janeway into silence. 

"The killing did not take place where the body was found," Tuvok interrupted. "The killer might have donned overalls before disposing of the body." He paused. "It is very possible, Captain, that forensic investigation will not suffice to pinpoint the killer. I suggest you will need to consider opportunity, and also motive."

***

Torres took a tray from the serving hatch. The Talaxian, having picked up on the complaints from the crew about his supplies, had taken it on himself to come into the mess hall and 'show you just how good this food is'. She stared dubiously at the results. 

"B'Elanna! Over here!" 

She glanced across the room and smiled tiredly. Seska was sitting by a window, beckoning to her. She turned to Harry Kim behind her. "Come on, Starfleet, it's time you made friends with some more Maquis."

The young ensign picked up a second tray and followed her. "No, thanks, B'Elanna. I think I'll eat with..."

"We have to get those potential variances sorted. If you explain it to me while we eat, we can save ten minutes later."

She could see the hostility in the faces of Starfleet people, but Kim kept his eyes fixed on his tray. He followed her, but his feet dragged. She worried for a moment that he might take some stick for cosy-ing up to the enemy, then dismissed her concern. The best way to get past that was to just get on with it. 

"Seska, this is Harry Kim. He's the senior ops person, so make nice to him. I need to keep him sweet."

Seska grinned at B'Elanna. "Pleased to meet you, Harry Kim."

"Yeah... uh..."

"Just call me Seska. Everyone does. I hear rumours Chakotay is threatening to give us all Starfleet ranks, but for now..."

"It's a bigger ship than the Crazy Horse, and we're likely to be aboard it longer," Torres interrupted firmly. "It makes sense."

"You think our life expectancy is higher here than it was back in the Badlands?" Seska laughed. "I hope you're right. With a murderer aboard..."

Harry swallowed.

"Or do you think they have the right man in custody, Harry?" Seska asked.

"Tom Paris didn't even know Lieutenant Rawlings..." Kim protested.

"Well, sure, but the same goes for all of the Maquis. And Paris was ex-Starfleet. Maybe they did know each other."

"How do you know Rawlings and I didn't fall out while I was at the Academy?" Torres broke in impatiently. "Or Chakotay, even. He could have known the guy from a few years back." She dug up a forkful of the mixed substances on her plate and tasted some, then stopped dead. "What is this stuff?"

Seska shrugged. "Tastes all right to me, and the humans mostly seem to think it's okay. I guess your Klingon half doesn't like it, B'Elanna."

Torres pushed the plate away. "I guess my Klingon half is going to make my human half go hungry then. Look, Tuvok's supposed to be investigating it..."

"I could understand if Lieutenant Rawlings had killed one of... one of..."

"One of us, Harry, yes," Torres said helpfully.

"Yes, well." The ensign moved his own lunch around a little but didn't risk trying it. "But if one of the Maquis killed him, in self defence, or whatever... I mean, even if it wasn't self-defence, who could prove it? Why conceal the crime?"

"So you think it was Tom Paris?" Seska asked eagerly.

"He just said, Paris didn't know Rawlings," B'Elanna reminded her. 

"Maybe Rawlings attacked Paris."

"Why would..."

"I wonder how popular Tom Paris is among the Starfleet crew." Seska looked at Harry.

He just looked back. Torres could see he didn't want to answer.

"So. Not very." The Bajoran sat back in her seat as if she'd proved something.

"Paris wasn't so very popular while he was with us, Seska. I think you called him Little Lord Fauntleroy come slumming..."

"I was only repeating what Chakotay said." 

Kim pushed his plate aside, knife and fork lined up together. "Torres, I thought you wanted to discuss the potential variations..."

Torres was a little surprised. Harry Kim hadn't seemed too pleased to see Paris in the Ocampa tunnels, although they'd both been so tired out she doubted if she'd have been able to raise a smile if Father Christmas had turned up at that point. And he had put a fair chunk of anger into the punch he'd given Paris on the bridge, when the pilot had tried to change sides yet again. But all the same, he didn't seem happy with this discussion, and she needed to keep Harry Kim just as happy as she could right now. "I'm sorry. Back to business. You said the design was a new one..."

***

Seska took her tray and left them to it. She stopped by the servery and picked up another tray, with a cup of what Neelix was now offering as 'a bit like what you call coffee'. It didn't smell too much like any coffee she'd ever tasted, but she suspected Chakotay would appreciate the stimulant, or at least the placebo suggestion. "Thanks, Neelix. You're doing a really great job in there."

The Talaxian beamed. "I hate to leave dissatisfied customers behind."

"No one has any excuse to be dissatisfied. These 'fleet people, they're used to spoon feeding. They moan about anything. But they'll soon learn to pull their weight and keep their mouths shut."

"It wasn't the Starfleet members particularly..."

But Seska was already gone. She carried the tray up to the captain's ready room and knocked.

"Enter."

"Chakotay?" She smiled at him. "The food's grim, but at least if you eat it up here, that little shaving brush won't know how much you leave on your plate."

He frowned at her. "Without his stores, we'd be in danger of starving before we reached anywhere safe to stock up. I don't want to be forced to trade with just anyone we meet."

It was Seska's turn to frown. "Are we requisitioning his stores?" 

"Of course not. I offered to trade water for them, but I've persuaded him to stay with us, at least for a while. We need his knowledge of the area, and the Ocampan woman, Kes, is going to help out in sickbay. That Starfleet hologram... he reminds me of the medic who gave me my first Starfleet physical. When he heard I came from Dorvan, he all but turned me inside out looking for malnutrition and parasites. At least Kes's bedside manner should be a little... gentler." He looked at the tray. "Any idea what this is?"

"Edible, almost guaranteed." 

He gave her a sly, sideways look as he forked up a mouthful. "How long ago did you eat it?"

"Ten minutes. B'Elanna and her puppy dog didn't eat any. At least they'll be conscious when the rest of us pass out."

He chewed on the mixture and made a sour face. "Seska..."

"Yes?"

"We can't afford that, those kind of remarks. I know we ran Starfleet down all the time, but we're in a different game now..."

"I'm sorry, Captain. I'll mind my manners."

He rewarded her with a smile. "They're certainly minding theirs, for now."

"And how long do you think that's going to last?"

"I don't honestly know. I never thought they'd accept it to start with, certainly never thought Tuvok would back me. And at the same time, I couldn't co-operate in simply being taken back to face trial, and prison..."

"And she knew she couldn't survive without our help."

"Mm." He nodded, still eating as if he just wanted to get it over with. "They lost people when the Caretaker grabbed them. Maybe because Voyager is bigger, more stress on the structure. Her exec, chief engineer, the whole medical staff, helmsman, twenty others. Lieutenant Rawlings would have probably been next in command after Tuvok. And Voyager was set up to be a science ship, not a deep space explorer. On top of that, they'd just had a personnel rotation. The crew is about as young and inexperienced as they get. If we wouldn't co-operate, she knew she couldn't make it without us. And she accepted that..." He shook his head. "I'm not sure I would have, in her place."

"Talking about Rawlings..."

"Yes?"

"I was listening in, to B'Elanna and Kim. He was saying Paris had enemies on this ship, people with a grudge about Caldik Prime, and about him joining the Maquis."

"Paris isn't the one in the morgue."

"Maybe Rawlings attacked him."

"Well..."

"Think about it, Chakotay. You're outnumbered, and at the moment, outskilled. Do you want to have to tell Janeway that one of us killed him?"

"You mean I should use Paris as a scapegoat?"

"Yes. Use your head. Who would care? Probably Rawlings spooked someone into doing something stupid, or one of the hotheads spotted him and decided to work off a grudge. Do you want to have to pin it on one of us? Make a reasonable case against Paris and bury the problem with him. He isn't Maquis or Starfleet. It was probably an accident, a bit of bad timing. We can't let it cause problems right now." She waited for a reaction, realised he wasn't liking what she'd just said. "What's the matter, Chakotay? You're seventy thousand light years from home. You can't afford to be too nice about this. And he is scum. A liar, a fuck-up. An arrogant bastard who lost hold of his daddy's coattails and couldn't make it on his own. Your words, Chakotay."

Chakotay looked at the empty plate in front of him for a long moment before answering. "Yeah. My words."

***

Janeway's lunch wasn't going too well either. The food didn't help, but the main problem was her choice of companion. Tuvok ate with Vulcan fortitude. She couldn't help thinking that Vulcan fortitude shouldn't be quite so apparent.

"The menu doesn't appeal to you?" she said eventually.

Her erstwhile security chief laid his fork down. "Commander..."

"Don't. Please. We're off duty. Call me Kathryn. The other... hurts."

He stared at her for a moment. "They would not have come with us on any other terms."

"Their choice." Her voice was cold.

"They deserved a real choice, not between prison or exile."

Now, she thought she perceived the extra dimension that had influenced him, beyond mere weighing up of numbers and skills. "You sympathise with them..."

"No. I do not. I know that they are asking the Federation for something which costs too much. But the other side of the coin is this: the Federation is asking *them* for something which costs too much. Their response, even while it is futile, and thus illogical, is honourable and courageous. The fact that it must be resisted does not make it any less so. "

Janeway felt her face tighten. 

"And then, we would not get home without them."

"How can you say that?" Suddenly, all her anger broke the dam that had checked it for thirty six hours. "How dare you say that? So we lost twenty people, so we were damaged. Ships in far worse shape..."

"We lost two pilots. We need Chakotay. We lost our chief engineer. I suggest that B'Elanna Torres might be a better replacement than Lieutenant Carey. You could probably fill that role, but without Chakotay, we would need you to pilot."

"Torres knows nothing about fifty percent of the systems on this ship..."

"And Lieutenant Carey's experience has consisted almost entirely of ordering spare parts from a replicator or Starbase and fitting them according to specifications. Torres will learn quickly and she knows how to improvise. I know this from observing her. You are used to operating within a support system that is now seventy thousand light years away. In the Delta Quadrant, Kathryn, we are all Maquis."

"We do have enough people qualified to fly this ship," she said, seizing on the one point she knew she could answer. "Tom Paris..."

"Is an unknown."

"The Maquis are unknown. Dammit, Tuvok. One of them killed Aaron Rawlings. Or maybe more than one of them. I do not believe that was Paris. He had no reason to do it. None at all. And if he had, why didn't he just stay with Neelix?"

"Maybe he wants to go home too."

"Then why kill someone? And if he's such a... a hopeless case, why did he come to me, offer to help me take back my ship? As you've pointed out, I'll only send him back to prison."

"Why didn't you take him up on his offer?"

Janeway pushed away her plate. "Because you're right. We won't get back on our own. So instead of taking the Maquis back to prison, I'm going to face a court martial myself, if it ever happens. But they deserve a way home, at an acceptable cost. And Tom Paris does too."

"I could use a mind meld to establish whether or not Paris is guilty..."

"You could. But will Chakotay take any notice? It's not strictly permissible evidence. He might just decide he doesn't believe you."

"Perhaps we should ask him." Tuvok looked up over Janeway's shoulder and cleared his throat. "Captain, may we..."

Chakotay was already shaking his head as he approached their table. "Later. I'm holding a briefing for what currently passes for department heads. Thirty minutes. I need you two to take a quick look through this." He slid a padd onto the table between them. "And be ready to give some feedback on the assignments I've suggested. We have to get this crew into some kind of shape."

Janeway pulled the padd a little way toward herself but didn't turn it around to face her. "Captain, is Tom Paris among those assignments?"

The Maquis' dark brown eyes narrowed. "No. I've already told you, Janeway, Paris is not a priority."

"I feel responsible for him."

"Then you can visit him in the brig on your own time."

"You have no evidence against him beyond the purely circumstantial."

"What are you saying, Commander? I haven't pronounced him guilty. He's simply in detention pending further enquiries. If you're worried about him, I can at least guarantee he's safe from any more Starfleet persecution while he's in the brig."

"And you're spared the embarrassment of asking your crew which of them killed Lieutenant Rawlings."

Chakotay didn't answer for a moment. Janeway suddenly became aware, in the silence between them, of the buzz of activity in the mess hall. She wondered if her remarks had carried to other tables. 

"Twenty five minutes, in my ready room." 

She stared at the back of Chakotay's head as he walked away from her. Then she picked up the padd and started scrolling down the list of names, each annotated with terse comments, or occasionally questions clearly aimed at her.

***

Janeway waited, silently, until the others had left. Chakotay was clearing his desk, turning off the padd he'd been using to make notes. "You're not happy, are you," he said, not looking at her.

Janeway rolled her eyes, unobserved. "I can't see... the logic of some of your choices."

He nodded to himself. "No. I appreciate you keeping that to yourself during the meeting... almost."

"I'm sorry if you think I spoke out of turn."

"I don't. Some of your silences were out of turn..."

Janeway swallowed. The biggest problem they faced was the lack of qualified, and more importantly, experienced, pilots. There were no well mapped, beacon studded, Starfleet patrolled trade routes in the Delta Quadrant. They needed someone at the helm who could react promptly and effectively to any sudden crisis, and they needed that ability at all hours of the day and night. There would be no 'graveyard' shift, when the biggest danger was falling asleep. She swallowed again. "You could ask Tuvok..."

"To perform a mind meld with Paris?" The Maquis looked up at her, smiling. "You know, Kathryn, most of my... most of the crew of the Crazy Horse don't regard Tuvok as just another Starfleet officer who was doing his duty. They might forgive you for planting him on us, but it will be a long time before they forgive him... before they forgive him for making them respect him, *trust* him. If he says Paris is innocent, it's not going to cut any ice. And once he's exonerated Paris, is he supposed to question everyone else who was on the loose when Rawlings was assaulted?"

"I wouldn't ask him to, not without some other evidence..." Janeway stopped. He'd called her 'Kathryn.' And, even more surprisingly, it seemed that he really didn't think Paris was responsible, and was half prepared to admit it to her.

"Seska seems to think you'd rather not be beholden to Paris, that you'd see owing him anything as a weakness."

"She said that to you?" Chakotay shook his head. "Seska blames him for wrecking the mission, the one where he was caught. It was strategically important to us, and two close friends of hers were killed. At the time, she thought he'd sold out, or that maybe he'd been a plant all along. She was more surprised than anyone else when he turned up here, on parole. She never believed he'd be imprisoned."

"And you?"

"I thought he was careless, incompetent, and too cocksure of himself. Dangerous, to himself and everyone around him. I didn't believe he was faking. It was too easy to believe he was just... what he was. The two casualties on that mission, they were my friends too. I don't feel I owe him anything. I think he has a way to go before I need to worry about that."

Janeway took a deep breath. What she was about to say was restricted: in her judgement, they wouldn't be home soon enough for it to matter, but she was still hoping she was wrong about that. "Paris didn't wreck that mission. Starfleet was tipped off by the Cardassians, who claimed they received the information from an agent among the Maquis."

Chakotay stared at her. There was a look in his eyes that couldn't be explained simply by the loss of his strongest reason to hate Tom Paris. "Information on that mission was restricted to five people. One of those isn't here, but it's someone I trust with my life..." He stopped and gave a dry little laugh. "I'd trust all of them, apart from one. Before today, I wouldn't have made that exception."

"Tuvok?" Janeway's voice was harshly indignant. "You cannot believe that Tuvok..."

"The last two days have been a good lesson in believing the impossible. But, no, I don't believe that Tuvok betrayed us to the Cardassians. He didn't need to know about that particular mission. But he knew enough about everything else... Just what was he there for? We weren't at the centre of things."

Janeway tried to soften her manner. "You were centrally positioned. He was accumulating information on all the people you had contact with, most of the main players. He'd have made it possible for us to place our next informant right at the heart of things."

"If he was doing so well, why not leave him in place?"

She looked down. "We were about to start using the information he'd fed us. It would have been dangerous to leave him there."

"You take good care of your own."

"Yes."

"Look, Commander, apart from Ensign Bateheart and Harry Kim, I have a dozen names of people who can start simulator training within a couple of days. If only half of them show any ability, we'll have enough pilots soon enough. I know it's another full time job on top of all your other responsibilities, but I'm in the same position. It's short term. We'll manage it. According to Neelix, the trade routes around here are well charted. We don't need to rely on the likes of Paris..."

"You were willing to rely on him to launch a Maquis mission."

"Flying a shuttle. That's a totally different thing. But it's not just that. I can't give him a position as a pilot without giving him rank. In this set up, he can't have rank without having other responsibilities. I don't trust him. It's as simple as that."

Janeway nodded to herself. "Okay. I'll accept that, but there's another problem. Carey."

Among the day's promotions, Lieutenant Joseph Carey had been made acting chief engineer. "

"He's your man," Chakotay snapped, exasperated. "Are you saying he can't do the job?" Carey had struck him as competent, reasonable, and confident, in a quiet way. As a person, the exact opposite to the only alternative candidate. "He knows this ship."

"No, Chakotay. He doesn't. He came aboard for the first time five days ago. He was nominally second in command in engineering, but he was new to that level. I just don't know..."

"So who was I supposed to make chief engineer?" he snapped back at her. "You? On top of manning the helm, and being my exec? Don't you intend to sleep?"

He raised a warning hand as she opened her mouth to answer. "No. I've said all I have to say on the subject of Tom Paris. If you feel you need to give Carey a helping hand, that's fine. Just don't feel you can start delegating any of the exec workload to other people. I'm not ready to see things spread that far yet. I need to keep tight control until everything's shaken down and we see if this is going to work."

"How," Janeway said.

Chakotay frowned at her. "How? What do you mean, how?"

"Until we've seen 'how' this is going to work."

He laughed, a genuinely appreciative laugh, and it was Janeway's turn to frown. 

"It's amusing that I have more faith in this... arrangement, than you do?"

"No. I just thought for a moment that..."

"That what?"

"That you were... It doesn't matter. I have a paranoid streak sometimes. It's pretty wide right now."

She cocked her head a little on one side as she tried to fathom him out, wishing for a brief moment that she'd met him over dinner, or on holiday, not on a hijacked starship seventy thousand light years from home. "I imagine having your government hand your home over to the Cardassians..."

"No. Turning up at Starfleet Academy and having senior cadets who should know better making red indian jokes."

"Oh." She shrugged. "I was accused of being 'daddy's little princess'."

"Deservedly?"

"You'll have to decide for yourself, Captain."

***

Harry Kim looked down at the tray he was carrying and wondered if he was making a mistake. Tom Paris probably wouldn't really want to see him, but on the other hand, no one had responded with any enthusiasm when Neelix had asked for someone to take the prisoner's meal to the brig.

And he reckoned he could stay awake for another five, ten minutes. 

The guard in the brig wore Starfleet security uniform, although the man was a stranger to Kim. 

"Can I talk to him?" the ensign asked, looking into the only occupied cell to check Paris wasn't asleep. 

The prisoner was reading. He glanced up and gave Harry a bright and artificial smile. "Is it any better than breakfast?"

"Not much," Harry answered cheerfully, "but Neelix promises that dinner is going to be delicious." He passed the tray in as the guard dropped the force field. 

"I keep asking myself why I didn't just leave with Neelix when I had the chance, and then I remember breakfast and realise I made the right decision." Paris took the cover off the tray and looked sideways at the ensign. "Oh my... How long has Neelix offered to stay and cook for us?"

Kim shrugged. "Chak... the captain hasn't made any general announcements about anything. Apparently they've been discussing how the senior posts are going to be filled."

"The Maquis don't have the talent to fill even some of them. Tuvok was the best all round person Chakotay had on Crazy Horse. And B'Elanna is good. But the rest are mostly... infantry. Good people, and quite bright, some of them, but Chakotay had to ride herd on them every step of the way." Paris let out a quiet chuckle. "You could see sometimes, he'd be about to ball them out for breaking some Starfleet rule. Then he'd realise I was there, and he'd just give me a look as if it was all my fault. Still, he only had two decent pilots, himself and Johannson, when I joined his ship... Do you know what happened to Johannson?"

Kim shook his head.

"Well, even Jonny would have found flying Voyager difficult. Chakotay's a good pilot..." The assessment was casually objective. "And Rawlings was a pilot, wasn't he?"

"Tom..."

"I didn't kill him, Harry. I wasn't prowling the ship looking for trouble. I borrowed all the hand weapons Neelix had and waited until I could talk to Captain Janeway. I mean, I was armed. Why would I hit the guy over the head? So, okay, I was holed up on deck eight. I had to move around because of the repair teams, but that deck had the least damage..."

"Which was why Rawlings was hiding there, presumably."

Paris frowned and nodded, as if he hadn't really considered what Rawlings would have been doing there. "I suppose so. But I didn't kill him. Every time I thought I heard someone coming close, I just kept moving on. All I wanted was to talk to the captain. I wanted to help her. I thought..."

"What?"

Paris pushed the tray away and walked over to lie down on the narrow bunk. "I thought I might be able to make a difference, that someone might care if I was on their side or not. First I thought Chakotay might be desperate enough to take me on, and..."

"That's it, is it? You just... sign on wherever? Doesn't it matter to you which..."

"Listen! I thought if Chakotay didn't assume I was on your side, at least I wouldn't be locked up in the cargo bay with the rest of you, and..."

"And what? You were planning to spring us all?"

"Okay. Don't believe me. Hell, why should you? But I didn't kill Rawlings. You can't say I did just because I don't have as good an alibi as the rest of you. I never spoke to the guy. I had no reason..."

"People are saying he might have given you a reason."

"What? The standard Starfleet 'we remember Caldik Prime' reason? I haven't killed anyone for that, Harry. I'm not going to."

"No, I know. It's just what people are saying. Not everyone noticed you can turn the other cheek."

"Did *anyone* notice?"

"I did. And Captain Janeway did." Harry hesitated. "And I suppose Chakotay knows it too. He didn't exactly pretend he was pleased to see you again, but you still went back and helped him."

"I wonder if she's regretting that now? If I'd let him die... Hell, Harry, even when I set out to be a hero, I get it wrong." He put the cover back on the tray. "I don't really want this. Thanks, but breakfast was bad enough."

"I'll leave it with you, in case you change your mind." Harry put his hand to his mouth as a yawn forced its way to the surface.

"I don't think I will. Is everything under control out there? You look whacked."

Kim just nodded. "I think we'll be going somewhere in another six hours. Just don't ask me exactly where."

***

Chakotay folded his arms across his chest and dug his fingers into his shoulders, hard. He was no good at deceiving himself. He'd spent a couple of hours concentrating so hard on reviewing the patched and crazy-quilted systems the repair teams had so far managed to get operational that he hadn't had to think about it. Well, if he was honest, Starfleet technology had taken such leaps forward in just the four years since he'd resigned... and he hadn't been on top of current engineering developments even then... he could hardly understand half of what Janeway and her people had been telling him. It had been easy to push the problem away. 

"Chakotay?" 

He jerked out of his thoughts, back onto the bridge of Voyager, his ship. He'd taken it, he'd better damn well hold it. He found himself looking into B'Elanna Torres' eyes from a distance of about twenty centimetres. She hadn't called him 'Captain'. Or maybe she had, and it hadn't cut through his preoccupation with Seska.

"Is there a problem, Torres?"

She nodded sharply. He jerked his head towards the ready room and she followed him in there, leaving Janeway on the bridge.

"Carey."

"What about him?"

"He's an idiot. Worse, he's an idiot who doesn't know he's an idiot. How could you have put him in charge of the engine room?"

Chakotay felt the tension in his back and neck wind up a couple of turns. "It might take him a few days to settle down into the job..."

"I just hope you don't mind limping along at half impulse on this shake down cruise you're planning for him. You could have made me Chief of Engineering. Did you even think about it? Didn't I keep 'Horse flying for you half a dozen times when you were ready to give up?"

"Yes, you did."

"Then why the hell did you promote that time-serving stores officer over my head?"

He took a deep breath. "He can bring the rest of the engineering crew with him. It's important that we..."

"Oh, so that's it. That's why just about every acting head of department you've named is a Starfleet officer. I'm not the only one who's feeling as if you've kicked me in the teeth. We have engineers, Chakotay. Seska's a brilliant warp technician. O'Neal can make *anything* out of scrap if you give him half an idea how. If every damn 'Fleet spanner on this ship downs tools and refuses to work with me, I can still do a better job than Carey. Try me!"

She waited for a response, an angry one. For a moment, as the silence stretched between them, she found herself worrying that she'd driven him beyond mere anger. 

"Look, Chakotay... I'm sorry. I think you've made a mistake. I can't help that, but..."

He looked up at her and surprised her by smiling. "You're sorry? B'Elanna... what? You think I've taken on more than I can handle and now you're going to hold my hand and help me sort it out?"

"Well..." She felt herself blushing under his keen gaze. "You looked... worried."

He laughed. "If you're being nice to me: naturally I'm worried. No, B'Elanna. What do I have to worry about? I have the best crews Starfleet and the Maquis can offer. Fighting for the same jobs, and the only prospect of promotion is moving into dead men's shoes. Although what the hell, I'm not paying anyone any more for the extra responsibility, and I don't think anyone should gamble on Starfleet paying back pay to Maquis pirates..."

"But..."

"Listen, what are we trying to do now? Defend our homes? Knock out the opposition? Keep Starfleet and the Cardies guessing while our ships make a bombing raid or run supplies past a blockade?"

"No..."

"So what are we trying to do? What's our goal?"

"Survival and... getting back to the alpha quadrant."

"Who? You and me? The Maquis?"

"Everyone." 

He nodded. "B'Elanna, Carey's inexperienced, but he's not an idiot. He's a qualified engineer. Janeway and I have discussed this. She'll be monitoring him until he has the hang of things."

She began to shake her head. "I don't know..."

"Torres." 

She almost jumped at the sudden sharpness of his voice. 

"Don't argue with me. I've made my decision and it's not open for discussion, with you or anyone. Lieutenant Carey is acting chief. You will back him one hundred per cent. End of subject."

"Yes, Captain."

"Right. Glad you're with me on that."

He smiled at her, and she nervously returned it.

"You know I am, Chakotay, I am. It's just I'm more with you over putting Harry Kim in charge of ops, or Neelix in the kitchen, than letting Carey decide for himself which end of a screwdriver to hold and which end..."

"B'Elanna..."

"Yeah?"

"Enough jokes for the moment, okay?"

She considered pointing out that she wasn't joking, but didn't. "Yes, Captain."

"Right." He worried at his lower lip, took a deep breath. She waited for him to get out what was worrying #him#. "B'Elanna, I have to get us home, and Janeway's crew home, and anyway, neither of us could make it without the other, so it's moot, but what if there was someone we didn't *need*..."

"Captain, I don't believe... I mean, it's more than just gratitude because he helped us get off the Ocampa world, and because Harry Kim seems to think he's worth something. I really don't think Paris killed that guy, Rawlings. I think... well... I hate to say it, but... there are people here, Maquis, who #really# hate Starfleet, and who know you might not be easy to convince that killing him was justified, even if it was. It's stupid, but... someone probably lost their temper, then thought it wouldn't matter because everything was such a mess anyway, and then..."

"Janeway says that Starfleet intercepted Paris's mission because the Cardassians tipped them off."

Torres was silent, confused by the apparent change of subject.

"Which means we have a Cardassian informer aboard. Now, does that person also deserve to go home?"

"What... are you saying?"

"I have... fairly persuasive evidence that points to one of my crew being that Cardassian informer."

"But..."

"Does that person deserve to go home?"

"You're talking about a traitor..."

"Not necessarily. I'm not sure I could justify treating a Cardassian agent any differently from a Starfleet plant."

"What?" Torres stopped. "There is a difference. You know there's a difference."

"Is there? They were at peace. We were the enemy, for both of them. Call this person a prisoner of war. Does she -- or he -- deserve to go home?"

Torres sank into a seat. "You're talking about Seska. Gods, Chakotay, you can't mean... No. I don't believe it."

He shook his head ruefully. "You're too quick, B'Elanna. It could have been me, Jonny, Paris or Seska. I'd like to believe it was Paris. I know he saved my life, but still... I'd rather believe it was him than Jonny or Seska. Only he #was# in prison. It wouldn't make sense."

"Janeway could be lying."

"Why? She has no reason to lie. She didn't pick on Seska. And she didn't come out into the open and say it wasn't Paris. She doesn't know enough to know where the blame really falls."

"Then maybe it was Tuvok, or Paris. Maybe they're all afraid there'll be a backlash. Maybe there should be..."

"For doing their duty?"

"So you're willing to let suspicion fall on Seska, my friend, your..."

"I considered Tuvok a friend. Didn't you?"

She looked at him blankly. "A friend? Well... I respected him. I can *still* respect him. Seska... If what you say is true, that's different."

"It's not easy," Chakotay admitted, surprising himself and her. "One reason I find I can believe it is that Seska's been trying to panic me into blaming Paris, evidence or no."

"To avoid that backlash..."

"Or to avoid taking the blame herself. I don't know."

They sat in silence for a moment.

"What a mess." Chakotay slammed his palm down flat on the empty desk, making Torres jump.

"What are you going to do?"

"Tell Tuvok to release Paris. There's no evidence against him. Or anyone else. Just about everything was down when Rawlings was attacked, sensors, ventilation, computers. We can't pinpoint anything. So... we'll start home, knowing we have a murderer on board, and a traitor... unless they're one and the same."

Torres scowled as she saw the connection Chakotay had made earlier. "What reason would Seska have to kill Rawlings? I mean... If she was a Cardassian sympathiser... they were working together against us, the Cardassians and Starfleet. She'd..."

"I've been looking at the records. Rawlings was posted on the ship that picked up Paris. He might have known more than Janeway about who the informer was, or been in a position to narrow it down. And Seska has been very willing to blame Paris for the murder, very quick to find a convenient scapegoat."

Torres was staring at him again, disbelief carved into her face. "No... She just doesn't like him. She never liked him."

Chakotay walked over to her, gestured her out of the chair. "Go away, B'Elanna. Be nice to Lieutenant Carey. You're his second in command. Lieutenant j.g. Congratulations."

"What?" Her expression said it all. She hadn't misheard. She simply couldn't take in what her captain was saying.

"This is ship is too big, and the divisions are too deep, to run it like a Maquis cell. I've talked it over with Janeway and we're agreed about this." He reached forward and unclipped her comm badge, pinned it back on the right way up. "We'll make changes, but..."

She was doubtful. "That's okay for you and me. We know the score, but..."

"The rest of them will learn, and fast. I rely on you to set them a good example. You're really..."

He stopped. She waited. 

"Get out, B'Elanna. Nothing I've said here is for anyone else. I'm tired and running off at the mouth." After she'd gone, Chakotay sat down at the desk and put his head in his hands. "You're really the only one left I can trust."

****

"So what do I do now?"

Paris looked ungratefully at the Vulcan who had just lowered the force field on his cell.

"I have no instructions on that subject," Tuvok said.

"Well... I think I need some guidance. Is my good name restored, such as it was? Or is Rawlings' death going to hang over me like an albatross for want of evidence one way or the other? Do I stay in this uniform? Do I have a cabin if I want to go change into something else? Is Neelix still offering me passage off ship, or does he think I'm a killer too?"

"I suggest Commander Janeway or the captain..."

"No thanks." The human's voice was sharp with resentment. "I guess you find out who your friends are in situations like this. Are the holodecks working yet?"

"I am not sure. If not, perhaps you could occupy yourself in correcting that deficiency."

"Perhaps I will."

Paris waited a moment, as if expecting to be given some restrictions to follow, a curfew on his activities. When none was offered, he turned and left. Tuvok made some adjustments to the control panel, resetting the security protocols to reflect the prisoner's departure, and wondering what steps would have to be taken before Rawling's killer -- to say murderer would be making a small, unnecessary pre judgement -- would occupy one of the cells. 

Something struck him as being out of place. He looked up, and realised the door to the corridor hadn't closed after Paris left. Such minor malfunctions were commonplace, but Tuvok made a mental note to tell Carey. Then he realised he could hear conversation in the corridor. Two of the Maquis, Duchamps and Tan, were grumbling about finding themselves taking orders in one of the cleanup squads from a Lieutenant Harris, although the title they used for the Starfleet officer was not the one associated with her rank. 

Tuvok tried not to listen. Harris, according to the personnel records available, was competent and usually popular with her subordinates. Logic, however, seemed to be taking a back seat in the two crews adjustment to their new circumstances. 

"Huh. He always wanted to run Crazy Horse like a Starfleet ship, only the crew would never wear it. Now he has a hundred forty brain dead 'Fleet robots to back him up, it looks like he's going to get his way at last. You only have to look at the h.o.d's he's picked to see what he must have been thinking of us all along. We were just cannon fodder."

"So what are we going to do about it, Tan?"

"What do you mean? What can we do? Gods, we're seventy years from having any choice about anything. The captain might have saved us from getting back and spending fifteen years in a nice, comfortable penal facility somewhere, but what did he get us instead? Seventy years in a flying gaol, with no guarantee we get out alive, and we have to work our passage. Hell, if we were in the Alpha Quadrant, we'd have every prisoners' rights agency in the Federation campaigning for us. We should bail out. The first nice, green planet we come across, we should all bail out."

Tuvok stepped out into the corridor and the two men came to a dead halt a few inches away from him. 

"I fail to understand your sense of grievance," the Vulcan said evenly. "You were brought here by the Caretaker, not by any agency of the Federation. The decision to remain here was taken to preserve the Ocampa, not to inconvenience you, and we are now jointly engaged in returning home as quickly as possible, to everyone's benefit."

The initial surprise in the men's eyes had given way to anger. 

"Yeah, that's what you say, traitor." Tan spat right between Tuvok's eyes. "Well, I guess listening in to other people's conversations is a hard habit to break. Go on, take me to the captain. I'll say my piece right to his face and save you the trouble of reporting it."

"Hey... Tan..." Duchamp's voice was low and cautious. 

Tuvok ignored him. He wiped his face with his sleeve and scrutinised Tan carefully. "The acting Head of Security was among those killed when Voyager was brought here. The department will require a second in command. I look forward to being persuaded that you can do it, Mister Tan. Or if you find you cannot, you will perhaps accept that Captain Chakotay has simply made the decisions that give us *all* the best chance of getting home."

Tuvok turned away and walked off.

"Damned arrogant, point-eared freak," Duchamp growled. 

Tan slowly shook his head. "Yeah..."

***

Paris surveyed what he'd achieved. A jigsaw of components that didn't quite meld together, and the people were stock figures stolen from two dozen standard programs, but the place had an atmosphere. Kind of like a transit area lounge, but still... it was civilian, and Alpha Quadrant, and everyone was a stranger, not just him. It would do, until he had time for something better. And it looked like he'd have seventy years to come up with something better. 

He walked up to the bar and ordered a Jack Daniels. The 'tender, an overdressed Englishman from a holonovel based on stories by Wodehouse, looked down his nose at his choice, but fetched it efficiently. Paris slid onto a bar stool and tried to close down the nine tenths of his brain that knew perfectly well this wasn't real.

"Hey! What's this?"

"Damn," he muttered under his breath. He hadn't engaged the privacy lock because of the slight risk that the holoprojector systems might have been damaged in the fun and games of the last two days. They were prone to some pretty bizarre malfunctions under the best of circumstances. But he had anticipated that everyone else would be too busy, or too tired, to come looking for holographic distraction.

"And looky who's here!" Another voice. They were both unfamiliar, male, not Maquis. Paris began to worry that he was in big trouble. 

"Can I help you, sir?" the holographic 'tender asked, provoking a guffaw from the first intruder, who mimicked him, poorly. His friend joined in the laughter, while Paris and the barman looked at each other. The hologram was wearing a weary half smile 

'I really have dropped out of the human race,' Paris thought. 'I'm grateful for a hologram who doesn't want to spit on me.' 

"Oh, this is wonderful!"

He almost jumped, then turned to see what kind of woman had a voice which spoke straight to his hormones. 

'Down boy,' he told himself warningly. She was red headed, almost as tall as Harry Kim, whose arm she was holding, and there were two of her, one on each side of the ensign. For a moment, Paris wondered if the ensign had brought his own holographic extras with him.

"Looks like someone's been playing in here while the rest of us have been working our asses off," one of the two men said irritably, but his hostility was considerably less obvious than it had been a moment ago.

"Lieutenant Tuvok sort of ordered me to check the holodeck was working," Paris explained, more to Harry than anyone else. 

The ensign widened disbelieving eyes. "Why would Tuvok be worried about that? I mean, it's great that it's working, and... did you do this from scratch?"

"Cut and paste," Paris said hastily. "But it'll get better."

"Does it work?" the second of the two earlier arrivals asked, gesturing at the array of bottles behind the bar.

"Sure, as much synthehol as you want..."

"Hold on."

Paris looked in surprise at Harry. "What's wrong with that?"

"The captain's announced replicator rationing. I don't know if that's been linked to use of the holodeck, but..."

"Then let's make the most of it." The unnamed crewmen turned as one being to the bar, with the two redheads right behind them.

"Computer, link all holodeck replicator requests to individual crew accounts," Harry said. He smiled apologetically when all four of his colleagues whipped round and scowled at him.

"Harry!" the slightly taller of the two redheads hissed. "What the hell are you doing?"

He looked a little as he had when he'd begun to get out of his depth with the Ferengi on DS9 "But the captain..."

"Is a f***ing Maquis! And we're all Starfleet here, Harry, except Tom Paris, and he's hardly going to tell us we can't have a drink. Hell, he's already got one."

She picked up the glass of whisky, gave Paris a dismissive smile and took a big swig, then passed it to what he imagined must be her sister.

Harry intercepted it and handed it back to Paris. "Jenny..."

"Okay, okay. We know." The sister spoke up at last. Her voice was even more meltingly beautiful than Jenny's. "We all go hungry if Paris here turns all our energy reserves into alcohol. You're a real boy scout, Harry Kim. That's why we like you. But we could have had one drink first." She simpered at Paris. "Or maybe Tom doesn't mind sharing..."

He handed over the glass and waited to see what she'd do. He wasn't surprised when she just said, "Thanks," and turned away to the two crewmen.

Harry gestured towards a table. As Paris walked over to it, he heard the ensign order a beer and "a whisky for my friend."

"You won't have any replicator rations left," Paris said unhappily, accepting the glass. He was glad, nonetheless, to have it. 

Harry sat down heavily and stared at his beer.

"What's wrong?"

"He's the captain, Tom. If we... if we're uncooperative, we might never get back. I'd rather Captain Janeway was in charge, but... She's not. We can't afford to score points off the Maquis. We have to work together on this."

"The lady was right. You're a boy scout."

"No, I'm not, dammit. This isn't a game, or a leadership exercise. I'm scared, for myself and all of us."

Jenny had wandered over, a new glass in her hand. Presumably the four of them had decided to pay their own way. "He's not a boy scout, Tom, he's a babe in arms. Harry, sweetheart, it #is# a game. A waiting game. There are one hundred forty of us, thirty nine of them, a Talaxian, an Ocampa. Oh, and Tom here. Think about it, Harry. I don't pretend to know exactly what the captain is planning, but whatever it is, she'll take her time, and when she needs to have the ship back, she'll take it. No bloodshed, no argument. She's a smart lady. Don't worry."

"Is that what you really think?"

She shrugged, eyes wide with amazement that he'd see things any other way. "Well, of course. It's how everyone sees it. Chakotay must know it too. He's not even trying to avoid it. If he was, all the senior Starfleet people would be in the brig, and the rest of us would be locked out of the computer, at the very least..."

"He couldn't run the ship like that," Harry objected. "He doesn't have enough engineers and technicians, for sure. He doesn't even have enough pilots."

"How many pilots are there?" Tom feigned casual interest, but Harry could see the veins in the back of his hand stand out as Paris involuntarily tightened his grip on his whisky.

"We would have had Stadi, Rawlings, Cavit, the captain herself and someone called Nivens, all fully qualified. I could probably make the grade if I put in sixty hours simulator time. Ensign Bateheart needs around twenty by the book, but he reckons he can do it without..."

"He probably can. 'By the book' is ninety percent keeping the desk-jockeys happy. And then there's the Maquis."

"None of those are going to be 'qualified'," Jenny said sarcastically.

"No, but Chakotay was a reasonable pilot. Has he suggested any others?"

Harry shook his head. "No. Not at the moment."

"That means Chakotay must be planning to take one in four shifts himself at the helm. If Captain Janeway's doing the same..."

"That's the problem, you see, Jenny," Harry said earnestly. "They can't get home without us, but equally, we couldn't manage without them."

"But there are more of us. Why should we..."

"Whoever is in charge of the damn rota, there aren't enough pilots." Paris slid out of his chair. "Certainly not if it gets difficult, if we were under sustained attack, or hit a nebula and decided it would take too long to go round. I'm going to see the captain."

***

Bateheart was piloting, Janeway tutoring him. She'd gone back to the centre seat, content that he had a reasonable grip of the basics, and quite certain that he'd make fewer mistakes if she wasn't looking over his shoulder. It didn't help that the entire bridge crew, herself excepted, looked very new and nervous. Three were Maquis. She was trying hard not to monitor every move they made. 

Seska was at tactical. Janeway had tried several times to make some kind of eye-contact with her. The awkwardness over her short detention in the brig needed to be put far behind them, but Seska wasn't giving her any opportunity to build bridges. The former captain found that puzzling. It seemed to her that any excuse for bitterness or resentment was all on the Starfleet side. Then a reason occurred to her, a very old-fashioned reason. She laid a bet with herself that Seska and Chakotay had been, maybe even still were, in a relationship of some kind. 

She relaxed a little in her seat. 

Good. 

Now, where had that thought come from? What did it matter to her what Chakotay's personal circumstances were? As his exec, she might be expected to concern herself a little in his emotional life, but... 

'So, Kathryn, you find him attractive?' She bit down on a frown. Yes, just as well he was already interested in someone else. That was a complication they both could well do without.

The lift doors behind her whispered faintly as they opened. 

"Captain!" Tom Paris' voice rang out across the bridge, visibly startling Bateheart, who clenched his fists and knocked a switch or two, then fumbled resetting them.

"He's in his ready room, Mister Paris. Can I help you?" She didn't turn, keeping her eyes placidly on the viewscreen.

"Uh. Yes... Well, no. I was talking to Ensign Kim, Captain... uh, Commander."

"Shall I call security, Commander?" Seska interrupted.

"If I ask him to leave and he doesn't, yes. Do you want to tell me what you said to Mister Kim, Tom, or would you rather see the captain?"

Paris came down to stand in front of her. "You're short of qualified pilots, Ca...commander."

"Ensign Bateheart is doing fine."

"Oh. I'm sure he is. But..."

"What exactly is this about?"

"I'm qualified to fly Voyager. And... it's not as if I'm planning anything else for the next seventy years."

"I'll mention that to the captain next time we discuss personnel..."

She stopped at the sound of a captainly throat being cleared behind her. 

"You needn't mention it to me. The answer is no, Paris. Your flying has killed too many people already."

Janeway felt her jaw drop. She hoped she caught it before anyone noticed, but Paris wasn't looking at her. 

The young man nodded to himself. "Okay, Chakotay. You have two qualified pilots. And a trainee. How're you doing, Bateheart? It is Bateheart, isn't it? Got your left hand sorted out from your right yet?"

"Paris," Janeway rose from her seat, a faint growl beginning in her voice. "Enough. Leave the bridge."

"That's eight hours each at the helm... maybe less on some long boring stretches, if you can..."

"Mister Paris!" Her tone now held the promise of a full-throated roar.

"Uh, Captain..." a new, sharply worried voice cut in.

Chakotay left Janeway and Paris facing off, turning to the man at ops. "What is it, Ayala?"

The ship shuddered, sending those who were standing lurching into one another. 

"We've encountered some kind of spatial distortion, Captain," Seska reported briskly

"I'm getting an audio signal, sir," Ayala chimed in. The ship shook again.

"Steady her up," Janeway snapped at Bateheart.

"Uh... I'm trying, Cap..."

"Take the conn," Chakotay cut in abruptly, gesturing Bateheart aside in favour of Janeway. As she slid into the ensign's place, the captain turned round to ops. "Get Kim and Tuvok up here. Order yellow alert. And tell Neelix we need him too."

"It looks like some kind of quantum singularity," Janeway reported. She'd quickly turned the ship's forward shields into the subspace ripples the phenomenon was giving off, letting the inertial dampers work more effectively. The deck was now vibrating faintly under their feet rather than trying to throw them over. 

"Let us hear it," Chakotay ordered Ayala. 

The signal was distorted beyond recognition. It spluttered static at them. Kim, taking over from the Maquis, had located the disturbance in the viewscreen. A bright spot of light at its visible boundary looked one moment like it might be a ship, the next like nothing at all.

"If it is a quantum singularity, the signal may be from a ship trapped in the event horizon," Tuvok reported. Seska had moved out of his way, but the bridge was now distinctly crowded. And Neelix's arrival with Kes in a blaze of pastels, added to the visual confusion as Chakotay issued a standard hail to the possible ship.

"Does that look like any kind of ship you've seen before?" Chakotay demanded of the Talaxian.

He wrinkled his nose as he peered at the viewscreen. "I don't know. I can't make it out."

Chakotay looked over his shoulder at Kim. "Can you clean up the visual signal, or the audio? If they're in difficulty, we'll have to try to help them."

"What is it?" Kes asked, her voice soft and anxious against the background splutter of static.

"A quantum singularity is a region of spatial distortion caused by intense gravimetric flux," the Vulcan explained patiently. "A vessel without warp capability could not escape the singularity. Similarly, light, and radio signals would be trapped by the gravitational field. We can only hear, and see, the ship, because their communication technology, and our scanners, are utilising subspace transmissions."

Kes wore a puzzled frown but she nodded.

"There's an Ilidarian colony just under four light years away, Captain," Neelix volunteered. "They're quite technically advanced, and quite friendly, usually."

"Usually?" Chakotay shook his head. "I'd have thought, if that is a ship trapped in there, that it would be getting in deeper all the time. Going for help might just mean leaving it too late. Carey? Are you getting this? Do you think we could use a subspace tractor beam to get a lock on them and haul them out?"

Janeway turned in the helmsman's seat. "We'd have to use the deflectors. If you..." 

The ship took a particularly sharp plunge, as if it had just topped an unseen swell. 

"Watch the helm, dammit!"

She snapped her full attention back to keeping the ship aligned with the shock waves as they hit, but looking into the viewscreen, she could see Paris' pale, anxious reflection watching her. Chakotay was still talking to Carey. She couldn't spare enough concentration to follow what was happening, even though she had her doubts about the man, whether he was enough of an improviser to deal with situations like this. And of course, there would only be situations like this from now. 

Then the intensity of the shock waves began to ease off, and the intervals between them were increasing too. She took a moment to look round. Kes and Neelix had gone from the bridge. Paris had retreated to the back, behind Chakotay's line of sight, as if he hoped he could stay until he was noticed. Chakotay caught her eye. "Can you keep us on a even keel like this? Carey's rigging the main deflector to generate a tractor beam, but he needs to modify the power couplings to do it. It will take a few more minutes."

"It's relatively plain sailing at the moment. I could go help out in Engineering..."

"Stay where you are. Carey can handle it."

Chakotay moved back into the centre seat and sat down, rubbing his fingers thoughtfully across his chin. 

Janeway shook her head as she turned back to the helm. Funny how familiar the man's mannerisms already seemed.

Harry was quietly making a damage report from the initial shake-up. Nothing serious, Janeway noted. Some problem with the sickbay holo-emitters. She forced herself to concentrate on the panel in front of her. She had been a competent pilot, a few years back, but the technology hadn't kept still just because she had to concentrate on other areas. She was handling this okay, but probably not as well as Paris undoubtedly would. Damn, if Chakotay's mind was as closed on every front as it was on this one, the future didn't look too bright.

***

"Tractor beam ready to go," Carey reported two hours later. 

"Great." Chakotay glanced at Janeway, now back at the helm after a rest break. She was doing a good job of hiding her worries, but he wasn't fooled. "Mister Tuvok, lock onto that ship."

The Vulcan obeyed as impassively as he always had aboard Crazy Horse. Chakotay sighed. How had he ever believed that a Vulcan could truly ally himself with the Maquis? Even while Chakotay himself had fought, killed and risked dying for his home world, he'd known that ultimately it wasn't logical, yet he'd never really asked Tuvok why he was there with them. Why the Vulcan too had fought, killed and risked dying. Merely to preserve his cover? If so, he was a frighteningly good actor, for someone who supposedly couldn't lie. 

"Engaging tractor beam," Tuvok reported, and then, "It's working. The beam has penetrated the event horizon."

The very faintest of tremors shivered through Voyager, like a horse about to shy. Chakotay opened his mouth to demand a report, but Harry Kim beat him to it. "Engineering, check your power levels. I'm showing massive fluctuations."

"Dammit. The new relays on the power grid aren't holding..." B'Elanna's voice, sounding like she was yelling across engineering. 

"We're being pulled towards the singularity," Janeway said. Her voice was distracted, as wrestling the helm took all her concentration.

"What's going on?" Chakotay asked, frustrated. He didn't know this ship, couldn't interpret how Voyager felt, what the subtleties of the reports meant. 

Harry was ready with an answer again. "The tractor beam is holding, but the gravimetric force of the singularity is pulling us in."

Nothing internal then. Voyager simply couldn't do what they were asking of her. "Impulse engines full reverse," Chakotay ordered. "Disengage the tractor beam."

"We're having trouble here, sir," Carey came back. "We can't shut it down. The emitter relays are locked."

"I'm picking up hull stress all over the ship." Harry, for all his youth, sounded more composed than Carey. Maybe fresh from a thousand simulations, he'd forgotten for now it was real. "If we use the impulse engines at full reverse while the tractor beams are engaged it'll pull the ship apart." 

"Cut the engines." Chakotay stayed seated with difficulty. He needed more information from Carey, or more action. 

"We're moving forward again... speed increasing to point four c."

Damn Janeway. How could she sound so cool? Didn't she care that he was about to bury her ship nose first in a black hole? "Get that tractor beam off line, Carey. Now. I don't care if you have to take an axe to it."

"Yes, sir. I'll... Uh, I'll have to get in there and physically cut the main power feed."

What did he want? The order in writing? "Do it!"

"Tractor beam disengaged." Torres sounded offended. Maybe Carey hadn't been burned to a crisp in the process. 

Chakotay breathed, which felt good. Of course, the other ship was still in there, but at least they were alive and able to go for help.

"Move us to a safe distance, Commander. Tuvok, get Neelix up here. We'd better find out all he knows about these Ilidarians."

***

"Activate Emergency Medical Hologram." Janeway felt like digging her fingertips into her brain and massaging it. 

The holodoctor sprang into solidity and beamed at her. "Captain. Please state the nature of the medical emergency."

"I'm #not# the captain."

He looked personally offended at the correction, then deeply worried. "Perhaps someone should look at my programming, and my databases. I had assumed the problem lay with the holo-emitters, but..."

"What problem?"

"I'm #shrinking#." 

Janeway let out a startled laugh. It was true, but his tone of wounded disbelief took her back to a morning when she'd picked up her older sister's clothes by mistake, and come to exactly the same conclusion, with the same words and the same sense of outrage. She'd seen convincing holograms before, but not incorporated in an emergency program. Someone had had fun with this, she decided, and realised her headache had suddenly eased.

He was scowling at her. "But more importantly, in the short term, I am making errors which could be dangerous. I have you recorded as captain of this vessel..."

"I was. I got the push."

"Well..." he said. "You seem... relatively well adjusted to #your# reduced status."

His bedside manner, Janeway decided, was less convincing than his impersonation of a surgical prima donna. 

"That wasn't your mistake, though. We just forgot to tell you. And it wasn't dangerous. What else?"

"I incorrectly identified someone's species. You can't tell me that isn't dangerous."

She nodded. "We have a couple of new species aboard. Maybe... ow!"

"What is the problem?"

"My head. I'm getting spasms of pain. Almost like a migraine, but..."

He reached out for a medical tricorder and began scanning her. "When did this start?"

"About an three hours ago, just before we encountered the quantum singularity. But we've been busy and it's only just got bad enough that I..."

"What quantum singularity? Why wasn't I told? I've had a stream of patients complaining of symptoms of dizziness, headaches and nausea. How can I be expected to diagnose people when I'm kept in ignorance of relevant information? Would I be told if the crew had been sampling exotic foodstuffs? Or distilling alcohol?"

Janeway closed her eyes as she laid odds with herself on how long it would take engineering to construct a still somewhere. And exotic didn't begin to describe Neelix and his culinary offerings. 

"I'll speak to the captain and suggest we tie you in to the main ship's database. Obviously, when you were set up, Starfleet were thinking in terms of battle injuries rather than ongoing health care..."

"Thank you. Who #is# the captain?"

"Chakotay."

She watched a whole review board's worth of scepticism roll across the hologram's face.

"Doctor, I just need a headache pill, or shot. I'm busy. I'll lie down as soon as I can, but..."

"The solution to your problem, Miss Janeway, and everyone else's, and mine too, probably, based on my limited understanding of holotechnology, is for us to leave the vicinity of the quantum singularity. Very slight temporal and spatial disturbances, at key frequencies, can have strong effects on susceptible individuals."

"But for now?"

He shrugged. "I can prescribe a strong sedative, and let you sleep through..."

"Thank you, but I have work to do." She turned to go, then stopped. "That's Commander Janeway. And..."

"Yes?"

"What should I call you?"

"Me?" His eyes widened fractionally. "Most people seem to be calling me 'Doctor'. You just called me that yourself."

"So I did. Well... Thank you. Doctor." 

This time she left. 

He sighed heavily. "And please turn the program off when you leave."

***

Denied medication, Janeway went in search of coffee, but she was buttonholed by Lieutenant Carey, who glanced nervously up and down the corridor while blocking her from making any further progress.

"Captain, can I talk to you?"

"Commander. That's Commander. Sooner or later, #Captain# Chakotay is going to have to notice what you're all doing and make an example of someone. The last thing this ship needs now is a brig full of martyrs and a captain who looks like a martinet. Start again."

"Commander, can I talk to you. Please."

She wasn't sure if the last was down to increasing urgency or a paranoid minding of his p's and q's, but she nodded, and even found a smile from somewhere. "What's the problem, Joe?"

He swallowed and shifted his feet, then spoke fast and furiously. "I don't think I'm cut out to be chief engineer on this ship. Not here. Not in the condition we're in right now. I don't have the experience, or the confidence, or the... the... guts."

She had to take a deep breath before answering. "I know this is a lot more than you realised you were taking on, even though you must have known there are never any guarantees..."

"But the delta quadrant? How could anyone anticipate that?" He was near to breaking point, she realised, or he'd never have interrupted her like that. 

"Joe, you can do it. You were second in command. You have seven years practical engineering experience. You'll get all the back up the captain and I can give you. I can't speak for the Maquis, yet, but the Starfleet people in your department have good, solid backgrounds too. Take advantage of their abilities. Brainstorm, give them their heads when it's not an emergency and find out what they can do. They'll respect you for it..."

"Until they realise Torres was born twice the engineer I'll ever be."

"She's that good?" Janeway demanded, startled.

"Yes."

"She was thrown out of Starfleet Academy. Do you think she's got what it takes to be a leader, to run a team?"

Carey licked his lips. "Off the record, Ca... Commander?"

"Yes." She watched him out of narrowed eyes.

"I know this isn't my... place. To say this. But I have two little boys, a wife. I want to get home. She may be a Klingon and a Maquis, she might break someone's head when she ought to put them on report, but I think she's our best hope of getting Voyager home. Things can't work that differently on a Maquis ship. Her people respect her, they know what she wants and they do it for her. Are you saying Starfleet has its engineers so tied up in protocol that we can't learn to do it her way?"

She didn't answer immediately, then she nodded slowly. "I'll talk to the captain. And, Joe..."

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Thank you for being honest with me."

He coloured to the roots of his red hair. "I can't pretend I'm not being selfish."

"There's not too much harm in that if we all realise our best hope lies in each other."

***

As the lift doors opened for Janeway, the ship lurched and threw her face down onto the deck of the bridge. 

"Report!" Chakotay was yelling, sounding as if he was already on his way out of his ready room. She wondered if #her# reflexes were that good.

"I believe we have encountered another type 4 quantum singularity," Tuvok announced as she picked herself up and gingerly checked out her nose for breaks or bleeds. It seemed to be intact.

"On screen." Chakotay was sliding into the captain's seat, and Janeway hesitated before sitting next to him, but for now, he seemed content to leave Bateheart at the helm. She doubted the ensign would concur, but took the seat.

"Physical and temporal dimensions are identical to the one we encountered earlier," Tuvok continued.

Chakotay was staring at the readouts beside him. "According to this, we've returned to our previous co-ordinates. This isn't another singularity. It's the same one. Ensign Kim, check the navigation logs. Confirm our position."

There was a long moment of silence before Harry reported, "The logs show we've travelled one point four light years away from the anomaly, but I've confirmed our position against the star chart and we're definitely back where we started. It doesn't make sense."

"They can't both be right," Janeway heard herself say. "And we can #see# the singularity, so..."

"That would imply there is something wrong with the warp drive or the navigation logs," Tuvok stated.

Seventy thousand years from home, neither was a good option. Janeway turned to Chakotay. "Captain, any body curves space around it, a singularity curves it a #lot#. Let me set a course away from here, looking out for any unusually sharp wrinkles in space..."

"Go ahead." Chakotay waved her toward the helm, while Bateheart was already getting out of his seat with a lot more speed than seemed entirely necessary.

"I'll lay in a course away from the singularity at maximum warp," Janeway said, matching actions to words. "Mister Kim, would you please keep a sensor lock on the singularity. Verify that we're moving away from it."

"Yes, Commander."

No one spoke. Voyager moved as smoothly into warp as she ever had, and sped arrow straight on the course set.

"Distance from the singularity is ten million kilometres and increasing," Kim intoned.

"Warp engines holding steady. All systems report normal," Janeway said, her eyes glued to her instruments.

"Eleven million. Twelve million... Uh... I don't... Captain, have you altered course?"

Janeway took a moment out, insanely, to consider suggesting to Chakotay that he simply reverse the definitions of 'Captain' and 'Commander'. "No. We're still steady on three ten mark two one five."

"Then something's really wrong here," Harry said. "It's ahead of us again."

"Confirmed." Seska's voice this time. A shiver ran down Janeway's spine. She hadn't noticed the Bajoran on the bridge. "We're back at the same co-ordinates."

"All stop." When Janeway complied and turned to see what Chakotay wanted next, he had risen from his seat and come to stand at her shoulder. "Have you ever come across anything like this before, Commander?" he asked, just loud enough for her.

"No."

"Can you use all the data we've accumulated to check through the computers to see if anyone else has?" He raised his voice. "I want complete system diagnostics in all departments. I'll expect a full report from all senior officers in my ready room at fifteen hundred hours."

"Captain."

He turned back to her. "Yes?"

"I would like to suggest that Lieutenants Carey and Torres both represent Engineering. I think they might both have... something to contribute."

He nodded, expressionless. 

***

Chakotay found himself thinking, as he kept out of everyone's way, that he'd been right to seize command after all. He alone seemed to have nothing to contribute to this situation. He'd come up dead centre through the Starfleet command path, knowing just enough about all the specialities of its various experts to get by, to facilitate. Knowing little enough about everything to see the big picture, someone had called it. Stellar cartography was combing records of rumours of singularities so remote and imprecise no one had ever charted them, Janeway was 'taking a look at her temporal physics tapes'. He sighed. One area Voyager was noticeably under complement was in the science department. Those people hadn't been considered essential for the trip to the badlands. They'd been left to finish leave when operational crew had been recalled early. Lucky bastards.

Lucky Janeway. Another hat for her to wear. Science officer, although there was a strong bias towards science experience in all the people she'd picked for her crew. 

The Maquis, he told himself resentfully, could put up a fair showing too on the science front, if they'd ever had the chance. In any other setting, his officers would shine. Just here, they were made to feel like the class dunces.

"Chakotay... What's wrong?"

Seska. He tried to look at her the way he always had, but he couldn't remember the how or the why.

She moved closer, concern all over her face. "Chakotay, have you eaten today? You look wrecked."

He forced a smile. "I feel it, truth to tell. Let's go find some lunch."

"Have you seen what the Talaxian is serving today? It's hard to say which is worse, the colour, the texture or the flavour. Let me treat you. Someone sorted out the replicator rations, at last, and I have some of your favourites programmed..."

"Seska..."

"Dammit, Chakotay, let me take care of you. I'm not going to make a big deal of it. You rub my back, I'll rub yours. No one needs to know."

Seska deserved to go home too, even if it was to face a firing squad.

Only it wasn't that simple...

"Chakotay, quit staring! Tell me what's wrong with you."

"Nothing. Let's go eat."

The crew lounge turned mess hall was nearly empty. One corner had been rigged into a makeshift kitchen for the Talaxian, who could be heard, bumbling about. Chakotay was tempted to ignore him, but Neelix appeared from behind a stack of crates and rushed over to the counter. "Captain, sir. Can I get you something?"

"Lunch?" 

Neelix snatched a cover off a pan. "This has been popular..."

'This' was still more than half full, but it looked innocuous. "Sure. Thanks."

The tray in his hand, Chakotay led Seska to a table by the windows. He started eating to avoid talking, but almost spat out the first mouthful in shock at the intense, unfamiliar spiciness. "What is this stuff?"

And she was laughing, handing him a napkin, and he was mopping tears out of his eyes, and it didn't look like the moment for a showdown, only just then, Paris walked in.

Chakotay wiped his mouth and looked across the table at the mercenary. Paris had his arms folded, and a look on his face which said clearly he was doing the right thing but Chakotay was too stupid to see it. It was ten times as irritating now, coming from a traitor and a convict, as it had ever been back when they were all Maquis.

"What do you want, Paris?"

"I've been helping Kes set up a hydroponics garden in Cargo bay C. Harry said he'd talked to you about it..."

"Yes. He did."

"I'm probably the lousiest gardener on the ship. If you want food..." Paris nodded at the mess on Chakotay's plate with a little smile. "...you really should find me something else to do."

"Paris, Chakotay is having lunch. He doesn't want to..."

"Shut up!"

Seska's eyes went wide, scared, at Chakotay's outburst. She laughed to cover her reaction. "Damn, you are in a bad..."

"I said 'shut up'. Paris, you #can# do something for me. Go ask Tuvok to come down here."

"What is this? A Maquis reunion?" Seska's hand was clenched around the napkin she'd been using to wipe the table. 

Paris didn't say anything, just obeyed.

"Why not use your comm badge? And why skulk..."

"Because I want to talk to you first. About Rawlings, and something else. Seska, someone told the Cardassians what Paris was doing. They told Starfleet, and that's how Paris and the others were caught. According to Janeway, that was the reason the whole thing went wrong and the rest of them were killed in the cross fire."

"And you believe her?"

"It makes sense."

"But hardly anyone knew about the mission, unless you're saying Paris..."

"That #doesn't# make sense."

"Well, you knew, Johannson. And I did. Chakotay..."

"What I'm saying to you, Seska, is that if you did tell the Cardassians, for whatever reason, and you come clean now, I can keep it quiet. For all our sakes, I don't need the crew torn apart looking for a traitor. Otherwise, I have to reckon there's someone on this ship who'd betray us, someone who's still prepared to kill to keep their secret..."

"Why do you assume it's me? Why assume what happened to that Rawlings guy is anything to do with this?"

"He was involved in the Starfleet mission that intercepted our people. He may have known more details of exactly what was known, and who told them. If it was you, Seska, and it comes out as the result of a full investigation, you're going to be torn apart. If you tell me now, I'll keep it quiet. I won't exactly find it easy to work with you, but..."

"Why should anyone be 'torn apart'?"

"A collaborator? Are you joking? You know how strong some people's feelings are."

"No one's said anything to Tuvok. Even Paris... No one's..."

"Neither was a traitor. Neither betrayed their own."

"And you think I did?" 

He couldn't make himself look at her. "I know the methods they use, threatening families, taking someone out of the prison camps and..."

"No."

"Seska, if I'm wrong, all I can do is apologise, but I'm trying to..."

"Well, don't bother. No one threatened my family. I was never in a prison camp..."

"You told me..."

"I lied to you. And I'm not a traitor, and I never betrayed anyone who had a right to my loyalty..."

"Then tell me why..."

"Because I'm not Bajoran. I'm Cardassian. Just like Tuvok is Vulcan. I did nothing that he didn't do. So what are you going to do now, big man?"

Chakotay felt like the air had been drained from his lungs and replaced with something thick and cold. 

"Tuvok is your Chief of Security, remember," she goaded him.

"You're not Cardassian. You can't..."

"You think because I slept with you, you know? Chakotay, you don't know #anything# about me. I am Cardassian."

He hit his comm badge. "Chakotay to sickbay. Activate Emergency Medical Hologram."

She arched her brows. "Really, Chakotay, what can that trick of the light tell you?"

"Captain. I am now sixty five centimetres shorter. I hope there isn't a medical emergency."

"There isn't. Have you performed medicals on any of the Maquis crew members yet?"

"I have performed preliminary examinations on Geron and Ayala, but..."

"But not Seska?"

"No. I have however treated some Maquis personnel for minor injuries, including Ensign Seska. She dislocated a finger, which I reset and..."

"What species is she?"

"She is Bajoran. Why..."

"Damn you! I'm Cardassian. Do you even have Cardassian data on file?"

"Of course he does." Tuvok's arrival cut through the confrontation. Paris had returned with the Vulcan but waited now by the door. He didn't look anxious to join them. Chakotay realised their voices must have been carrying. He beckoned the man forward. His presence by the door was holding it open.

"I am Cardassian, Chakotay," Seska repeated. "What do I have to do to prove it?"

"Lieutenant Tuvok, Seska has admitted being an agent of the Cardassian government. By Maquis custom..."

"I was under the impression, Captain, that you had decided to run this ship under Starfleet, and therefore Federation law, rather than Maquis... custom." 

Contempt, Chakotay thought bitterly, obviously didn't count as an emotion. "She committed treason..."

"I did not!"

"And those of us whose lives she jeopardised, whose friends she killed, are not going to wait until she can be tried by a Federation court that's seventy thousand light years from here." Chakotay took a deep breath. "On Bajor, collaborators face execution. It may not be logical, but it's necessary. The Bajorans need to know they can trust each other, and so do the members of a Maquis cell. Out here, Tuvok, if we need anything, it's going to be trust."

"Captain, I do not see any moral difference between her actions and mine."

"You were obeying Starfleet orders. She was selling out her own people."

"That is true only if she is Bajoran."

"Captain..."

"Shut up, Paris. If treason isn't crime enough for you, Tuvok, don't forget she killed Rawlings, and tried to blame Paris for it." Chakotay jabbed a finger in Seska's direction without actually looking at her.

"...Knowing that you'd be only too pleased to believe her," Paris said bitterly. "I'm sorry, but I'm going to give you another reason to hate my guts. She probably is Cardassian. Doc..."

"Yes?" The hologram sounded offended at being ignored. "I simply took your word for it, Mister Paris. I couldn't immediately classify her among the species I knew to be serving in Starfleet, and..."

"What the hell are you playing at, Paris?" Chakotay kept his hands at his sides with difficulty. He was aware of Neelix, hovering almost out of sight in the kitchen. It was fourteen fifty. He needed to get this tied up and put on one side. If he didn't, they probably wouldn't survive long enough for anyone to care if Seska was part of the borg.

"When you left me in sickbay, I persuaded the EMHP to find out what was going on in the brig, if you'd banged up Captain Janeway in there. I saw you'd put Seska on guard, the doc was reading off from the medical sensors and didn't seem to know what to call her. I just... filled in for him."

Chakotay glared at Paris as if he'd done it deliberately. "So if she's not Bajoran, could she be Cardassian?"

There was a momentary silence on the comm channel. "No."

Seska slammed her hand down on the table . "Yes! I was altered, right down almost as far as my DNA, as far as anyone on Bajor or in the Maquis was going to look..."

"Oh, yes. That's possible."

"Make up your mind!" 

"I'm sorry, Captain. I was designed for medical emergencies, not forensic work. I simply hadn't considered the possibility of people pretending to be something they aren't. Do I now have to check that the entire crew isn't lying?"

Paris rolled his eyes.

"Paris, get out of here. No, hold on. There's still Rawlings..."

"I didn't kill him," Seska said fiercely. "You've conjured up a motive out of thin air. Why would he know any details of where the information came from? At what, third, fourth, fifth hand?"

"Paris?"

"I could never work out why I was supposed to have a reason to kill him in the first place. I hate to disappoint you, Chakotay, but he didn't call me names and I didn't hit him over the head with the piece of lead piping. I'm sorry someone killed him, but I never spoke to the man."

"Tuvok?" Chakotay asked finally.

"There are four possibilities, in decreasing order of likelihood: that Lieutenant Rawlings was killed by Ensign Seska, given a motive compatible with her Cardassian loyalties. I have not yet identified any such motive. I had considered that she might have been attempting to access the power grids to generate a subspace signal, but I believe she knows as well as I do that such a signal would not reach the alpha quadrant, and there is no one else she was motivated to contact. Next, that Thomas Paris being in the area of the ship where the fatal injury occurred, attempting to remain out of sight, and a target for hostility from both Starfleet and Maquis personnel, attacked the lieutenant. The evidence against him, however, is barely circumstantial. Thirdly, that the attacker was any other member of the Maquis crew, for reasons unknown, and fourthly, that the injury was caused by debris from repair work during the initial recovery stages, and hence an unfortunate accident."

"An accident?" Chakotay scowled. "You're saying it's an accident now?"

"It is unlikely, but possible. I have no further evidence of criminal actions, or of a specific motive for murder, beyond general philosophical grievance. Accidental death might be a politic verdict in the circumstances."

The captain blew out a frustrated breath. "The file stays open. Seska, I'm going to accept your claim to be Cardassian, and I'm going to let you serve on this ship until you can be transferred to Federation custody for repatriation on our return to the Alpha Quadrant. Tuvok, Paris, you don't tell anyone any of this. I'll tell Janeway myself. We're about to be late for a briefing, Tuvok..."

Chakotay shouldered his way between Paris and Seska, leaving them staring at each other as the two officers left.

It was Seska who spoke first. "Well, I really didn't expect... that."

"To still be a free woman? He's right, though, isn't he? You were doing exactly what Tuvok was doing."

"But at least we hadn't sunk as low as you, Tom. Selling our friends out to get out of prison."

He couldn't meet her contemptuous gaze. "No. I guess you hadn't quite fallen that far. It must be reassuring, to know there's an even lower life form on board."

She smiled icily. "Don't worry, Tom. I'll stand by you. If we do get back to the Alpha Quadrant, we might both want to jump ship ahead of schedule. That could be easier for two." She waited for a reaction. "It was just a suggestion. But the next seventy years could be pretty lonely." 

He let her walk away, turning his attention to the window, wondering when, if ever, the ship would get moving again.

"Tom..."

He jumped."Christ! Neelix..."

"What's a Cardassian?"

"You were listening?"

"I was in the kitchen. The captain knew I was there. I'm sure he trusts my discretion."

"If you tell anyone what you just heard, I don't rate Seska's chances."

"Chances of what?" 

The Talaxian's earnestness grated on nerves that were suddenly raw. "Surviving, you dumb... I'm sorry. You know the Maquis and Starfleet were fighting?"

"Yes." Neelix was stiff, offended. 

"The reason for the fight was a treaty between the Cardassians and the Federation, which is the same thing as Starfleet. So the Maquis were fighting the Cardassians too. Tuvok was a Starfleet spy in the Maquis, and now it turns out Seska was a Cardassian spy. Oh, and you should realise that just because they had a treaty, that doesn't actually mean Starfleet likes the Cardassians either."

Neelix shrugged. "Sometimes the Alpha Quadrant sounds pretty familiar to an old Delta Quad inhabitant. Well, you can rely on me, Tom. I won't tell a soul."

***

Chakotay sat as his 'senior officers', or acting equivalents filed in. Tuvok looked... like Tuvok, Janeway was unreadable but beckoned B'Elanna to the seat next to her. Carey sat opposite them. Harry Kim made up the party. Chakotay wasn't too sure how the youngster had wound up being there: he just seemed to know more about ops than anyone else: that and having Starfleet protocol engraved on his heart gave him an aura of professional confidence at odds with his youth. The kid just #knew# how to do the right thing. Janeway caught Chakotay's eye as he looked away from Harry and smiled. 

Once everyone was seated, Chakotay cleared his throat. "Tuvok, ship's status?"

"Ship wide diagnostics have revealed nothing out of the ordinary," the Vulcan reported.

"Commander?"

Janeway shook her head. "There are no references in the Starfleet database that help us, I'm afraid, but..."

"Yes?"

"It's a long shot. I was thinking about the doctor. If the problems with his imaging system are related to the singularity, we could maybe screen out the distortions by setting up a localised damping field around the projectors..."

Chakotay realised he was looking bemused and switched to impatience. "Is the medical holographic system really a priority..."

"No, Captain."

He turned to look at B'Elanna. "Well?"

"No, she means, if the distortions are also interfering with the transmission we received from the other ship..."

"...we could set up a similar field around our external sensors and communicate with them," Janeway continued. "And they may know more about the singularity than we do."

"Lieutenant Carey, can we do that?"

The engineer tore his eyes away from the Janeway/Torres double act with difficulty. "Frankly, Captain, I wouldn't have a clue, but I'll help them any way I can."

Chakotay weighed the situation. He didn't like Carey's apparent abdication, but he couldn't see any way to deal with it now that wouldn't waste precious time. "Okay. Let's give it a try," he said. 

***

Establishing the field was easy once they'd figured how to do it. Less than fifteen minutes later they were listening once again to the message from the trapped ship. Already, it was sounding as if there was a voice in there somewhere.

"It's working," Harry Kim exulted. "I think I can clean it up a little more..."

And out of the static came Chakotay's voice, repeating the standard opening hail that he'd made eight hours earlier.

"What the hell? Could we have travelled back in time?" Chakotay looked from Janeway to Tuvok, to Kim. They all seemed as stunned as he felt. "My ready room. Now."

It took them five minutes to work out, and accept, what had happened, that they were the ship in the singularity, looking out at themselves eight hours ago. 

"So how do we get out?" Kim asked, looking not at Chakotay for the answer, but Janeway. Neither answered him. Instead, it was B'Elanna who spoke.

"I'm not sure, but I do know one thing. That as we slide deeper into the singularity, the spatial distortions are increasing. According to my calculations, within nine hours, they'll crush the ship."

"Carey, is that right?"

The lieutenant looked at Torres as if he couldn't answer for himself. "Yes, sir. No question of that..."

"Nine hours? Then I think we can spare thirty seconds to straighten something out here. Which of you two is in charge down in the engine room?"

Carey looked down at his hands on the table. "I am, sir, but..."

"Yes?"

The engineer faced everyone, and said doggedly, "I can patch up a Starfleet systems with incompatible parts in a workshop, but I'm not sure I can do it under fire with the bridge yelling for warp power, or tractor beams, or anything else #right now#. I think Lieutenant Torres can. I don't know about everyone else in Engineering, but I'm prepared to take orders from whoever can get the job done, whatever way she does it. If she needs my help to keep the others in line, she's got it."

Chakotay paused. He looked out of the corner of his eye at Janeway, who nodded.

"Then you're dismissed."

There was a moment of awkward silence as Carey left the room, but Chakotay made no concessions to anyone's disapproval. "So, Commander, Lieutenant, if your analysis is correct, how do we get through that sheet of ice?"

B'Elanna answered immediately. "Look for a crack..."

"Or make a crack," Janeway said, picking it up and running with it. "Take something and smack it into the ice until it buckles."

"Wait a minute. What if we've already made a crack..."

"When we first entered the event horizon..."

"If we could find our entry point, maybe we can slip out where we came in..."

"So we'd be looking for a subspace instability in the event horizon. What would make it show up on our sensors?"

For a second, both women were silent, and Chakotay couldn't help seeing them as a conjuror and her assistant, teasing the audience. "Ladies..."

"Warp particles!" Both announced the punch line, and Janeway took off again. "If we saturate the event horizon with warp particles, we might be able to see them escaping through the rupture we made when we entered. Mister Tuvok, take the main deflector off line. Mister Kim, reroute the port and starboard plasma flow to the main deflector. We can use it to generate a warp field."

Tuvok and Kim sat frozen, a blush flooding the human's face.

"Gentlemen." Chakotay kicked his chair back and stood up. "Please proceed."

***

Back on the bridge, Chakotay took the centre seat from Ayala. Kim and Tuvok went straight to their stations, while Janeway slid into the pilot's position.

"Deflector off line."

"Initialising plasma flow," the two men confirmed.

Everyone's eyes were fixed on the viewscreen. "Commander, would you co-ordinate this, please," Chakotay requested neutrally. "It might help everyone's concentration."

He saw Janeway's shoulders begin to turn, then she squared them. "Release the warp particles," she ordered Tuvok. "Harry, scan the singularity."

"Yes, ma'am."

"See anything?" B'Elanna asked impatiently.

"Not yet," the ensign reported. "Warp particles at full intensity."

"I'm picking up something." Janeway let a little triumph creep into her voice. "Just a slight irregularity. It could be what we're looking for."

Chakotay leaned forward. "Put it on screen."

"It is a rupture! It's fifty metres by ten metres..."

"That's too small," B'Elanna said bitterly. "It must have collapsed since we first passed through it."

"But we've found it. That's the important thing. Now, how do we make it bigger?" Janeway did turn now, to look at Torres.

"By... by... putting a wedge in it and forcing it open. We could try a dechyon beam. Yes, I'm certain that would do it, Captain." Torres clapped her hand over her mouth as everyone looked at her. "I mean, I think that would work, Commander."

Janeway nodded gravely and let her eyes slide across to the man in the centre seat. "Captain?"

Chakotay took a moment to let things settle. "Can we emit a dechyon beam from here?"

"No." Janeway shook her head. A few strands of auburn hair had escaped over the last few minutes. She reached a hand up absently as one tickled her neck. "I doubt we have enough power to do that. B'Elanna?" 

"Uh. No, we don't." 

"And if we get too close to the rupture, our warp engines might make it collapse even further. Permission to take a shuttle, Captain?"

"No."

He could tell he'd surprised her. 

"No," he repeated. "I appreciate your willingness to go, but if this goes wrong, you and B'Elanna are more likely to think up another strategy than I am. I'll go. And I'll need someone who can handle the helm, keep the shuttle steady while I hammer the wedge home..."

"I recommend you take Tom Paris." 

Chakotay scowled at her, but since he didn't have anyone from his old ship to recommend, other than B'Elanna whom he'd just ruled out, he wasn't in a position to argue. "Okay. Tell him to meet me in the shuttle bay. The bridge is yours, Commander. And keep an open comm channel. I'm relying on you to give me step by step instructions."

***

Paris surprised Chakotay by silently taking the helm and awaiting orders, without any of the smart remarks the Maquis had been anticipating.

"We've cleared Voyager," he reported.

"Shields at full strength."

"Aye, sir. Four and a half minutes to the crack."

"Voyager?"

"Receiving you, Captain."

"I'm getting the beam on line now, and remodulating the emitters. No problems at this end."

"All quiet here too, Captain."

They lapsed back into silence. There was nothing to look at. Without the shower of warp particles the event horizon was invisible.

"Two minutes." Paris cleared his throat. "Captain?"

"Yes?"

"This isn't a suicide mission, is it?"

"Not... in the way you mean, no."

Chakotay made himself comfortable in the co-pilot's seat, thinking about the people who'd be watching them from the bridge. Ayala, Geron, Torres, Tuvok... he mentally moved the Vulcan into the next category, the Starfleet officers. Tuvok, Bateheart, Kim... nice kid. Reminded Chakotay of himself, with none of the half healed-over scars. Janeway... 

"So I'm... rehabilitated?" Paris sounded very wary.

"I think you'll be at the helm of Voyager before this day is out."

"If I don't mess this up?"

"If you mess this up, it's pretty academic, don't you think?"

"Okay," Janeway's voice broke in. "You're close enough. Let's open this hole in the ice a little wider."

"I'm initiating the beam."

Almost immediately, a shock wave hit the shuttle, rocking them. Faintly over the comm, Harry Kim's voice was audible. "They've widened the rupture by almost thirty five percent."

"We'll have to widen it by twice that much before Voyager can make it through," Paris said calmly. "I hope Captain Janeway is going to be at the helm. Sorry. Commander Janeway."

"Forget it," Chakotay said shortly. 

Another shock tipped the shuttle nose up and then down, and from Voyager, Janeway was heard to say, "I'm doing my best to keep her steady, but it's getting harder."

"The spatial distortions are increasing."

"Hull integrity has dropped eighteen percent."

Static made identifying speakers difficult. Chakotay was studying his panel, ignoring the dizzying movement on the viewscreen. "We've widened the opening by over sixty five per cent. I'd like another five for safety."

But Paris reported, "We're losing power. I don't think we're going to get any more, Captain."

Chakotay raised his voice. "Voyager, that's all we've got. It's not holding steady. It's closing again already. Janeway, take her through, now. We'll come through on your tail."

"Captain, the turbulence..." she objected fiercely.

"Now. That was an order."

Another wave struck and there was a scream of protest from disrupted systems in the shuttle.

"Comms are down," Paris said. "Do you think they'll..."

"They will. She knows it's now or never. There they go."

Voyager turned with lazy elegance, heading straight towards the last known location of the rupture.

"They should..."

A haze of warp particles burst from the deflectors and illuminated their target.

"...And they have. Shall I follow, Captain?"

"Right on her tail, Paris. Hold on to Voyager with your teeth if you have to."

"She's never going to make it. Damn, damn, it's too tight. She'll never do it..."

Chakotay fought the urge to close his eyes. The warp particles were dissipating, and Paris could only follow and hope.

Voyager shuddered, bucked, and vanished from view as it breached the event horizon, only to reappear again a moment later as the shuttle too broke loose.

"With one bound, they were free!" Paris punched air and turned to Chakotay to share his exultation.

"Thank you, Mister Paris. Nice flying. Can you take us in to the shuttle bay?"

Paris settled back into his seat, deflated. "What, before they head off without us? Oh, don't worry. I'm joking. I may be dispensable, but you aren't, and the shuttle certainly isn't."

"Janeway's showed no sign of wanting to get rid of you."

Voyager was holding position, turning slowly so that her shuttle bay doors were facing the little craft as they hurried to rejoin her.

"That's what you think," Paris said a little gruffly.

"She's been arguing for letting you pilot Voyager all along."

"Has she? Well, it's not her decision, is it?"

"Don't be too sure. If I knew how many replicator rations I had, I'd offer you a bet, Paris. When those shuttle doors open, Tuvok will be outside waiting for me with a couple of Starfleet guards, armed, and I'll be heading for the brig. You just wait and see."

Paris made a minor course adjustment, aligning with the beacons that would guide the shuttle into the bay, then he turned to face Chakotay.

"If you thought that, why the hell didn't you send Janeway, or someone else, to do this?"

"Because I calculated I'm about the most dispensable person on Voyager, right now. No ship needs two captains. If something happened to Janeway, then maybe there'd be a role for me. I'm not sorry I tried. Maybe she'll have taken on board what I was trying to guarantee for my crew. Maybe in a couple of years, or whenever, she'll reckon they've earned those guarantees in their own right. I don't know."

The shuttle vibrated a little as it touched down on the deck. Chakotay unstrapped himself and stood up. "Coming, Paris?"

"Yes... Captain."

Chakotay turned back. "Thanks. She stood by you, you know. I hope you'll do the same for her." He took a deep breath and hit the door control.

***

Half an hour later, Janeway took the one real cup of coffee she was allowing herself each day from the ready room replicator. She turned back to face Chakotay. 

The End


End file.
